Visiting Writers Series

Kalamazoo Valley's "About Writing" Visiting Writers series is coordinated by English instructor Julie Stotz-Ghosh, Ph.D., and offers students and community members the opportunity to talk with professional writers and listen to their work.

Upcoming Visits

Visiting Writers Series: Reginald Dwayne Betts

Reginald Dwayne Betts will be visiting Kalamazoo Valley as a part of our Visiting Writers Series.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer and the Founder and CEO of Freedom Reads, an initiative to radically transform access to literature in prisons. Betts warmly invites students to join his series of events.

Nov. 12 | 5:30 - 6:30 p.m. | Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College | Student Meet and Greet
Nov. 12 | 7 - 8:30 p.m. | Discussion of "Doggerel" at the Western Michigan Multicultural Center, open to the public
Nov. 13 | 4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. | Kalamazoo Institute of Arts | Tour of the KIA exhibition Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper with head curator Rehema Barber open to college students, faculty and staff only
Nov. 13 | 6 -7 p.m. | Kalamazoo Institute of Arts | Public Lecture: "The Ways that Paper Leads to Freedom."

Learn more: https://www.kiarts.org/betts/
Sign up: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeGR4CYE2gaDy7QMnsK6js-YNtItVaJSvDPhxNmZVRVqIkWUQ/viewform

Visiting Writers Series: Mary Hatch and Elizabeth Kerlikowske

Feb. 17 | 10 a.m. | Student Commons Lounge

Mary Hatch is a Kalamazoo-based artist and printmaker who earned her Bachelor of Science and Master of Arts degrees from Western Michigan University. She co-authored "Art Speaks: Paintings and Poetry" (Kazoo Books, 2018) with poet Elizabeth Kerlikowske. Her work has been featured in more than 30 solo exhibits and is part of over 300 public and private collections across the United States and Canada.

Elizabeth Kerlikowske is the author of "The Vaudeville Horse" (Etchings Press, 2022) and "Dominant Hand" (Mayapple Press). She co-authored "Art Speaks: Paintings and Poetry" (Kazoo Books, 2018) with artist Mary Hatch. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including "Cincinnati Review," "Passager" and "Poemeleon." A former president of both the Poetry Society of Michigan and the Kalamazoo Friends of Poetry, she is retired from teaching at Kellogg Community College and continues to write and collaborate in the Kalamazoo arts community.

Visiting Writers: Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Join us as a part of our Visiting Writers in welcoming Lyanda Lynn Haupt to Kalamazoo Valley!

She will be hosting a craft talk at 10 a.m. on March 18 and a reading at 2:15 p.m. in the Student Commons Lounge.

"With her deep intuition and expansive attention as our guides, Lyanda Haupt's gorgeous words create a path to the place where science and spirit meet. It's a barefoot path that wanders through solitudes and into community with frogs, moose, orca and our own wildness," said Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of "Braiding Sweetgrass."

Lyanda Lynn Haupt is an award-winning author, naturalist, Eco philosopher and speaker whose work explores the beautiful, complicated connections between humans and the wild natural world. Her newest book is "Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit" (Little, Brown Spark, 2023).

Haupt's writing is acclaimed for combining scientific knowledge with literary, poetic prose. Her previous books include "Mozart's Starling," "The Urban Bestiary: Encountering the Everyday Wild," "Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness," "Pilgrim on the Great Bird Continent: The Importance of Everything and Other Lessons from Darwin's Lost Notebooks" and "Rare Encounters with Ordinary Birds." She is the recipient of the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, the Nautilus Book Award, a finalist for the Orion Book Award and a two-time winner of the Washington State Book Award.

She has created and directed educational programs for Seattle Audubon, worked in raptor rehabilitation in Vermont and served as a seabird researcher for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the remote tropical Pacific. Her essays have appeared in publications including Orion, Discover, Utne, the Los Angeles Times, Times Literary Supplement, Image, Huffington Post, Wild Earth and Conservation Biology Journal. She lives in the mossy green woodlands of Bellingham, Washington.

Visiting Writers Series: Ross Gay

April 16 | 10 a.m., Student Commons Lounge

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; Inciting Joy was released in 2022, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights was released in September of 2023.

Previous Visits

News Stories

Alumna NoViolet Bulawayo Returning for Kalamazoo Valley's Visiting Writers Series