Emerging Writers Reading Series
Ahmend Studioz
Mark your calendars for our next event on Monday, February 12th at 7PM EST on Zoom! This event will include readings from Melissa Ren, Catherine Lewis, Jennifer Park, and Tazi Rodrigues as well as a brief talk for emerging writers with Deanna Fong from The Capilano Review.
Our next event will be online on January 8th, 2024 at 7pm EST! This event will include readings from Iryn Tushabe, Paula Turcotte, Catherine St. Denis, and Kathy Mak as well as a conversation with literary editor Ryanne Kap from Ex-Puritan Magazine.
EW does not have the budget to pay for travel expenses, but writers from other parts of Canada that are visiting Toronto are still encouraged to submit. Writers who have read at EW in the past should not resubmit. This allows EW to avoid booking repeat readers, keeping their shows full of fresh, emerging voices.
Payment
Each reader will be paid, though the amount will depend on our funding allocation for the year. Readers have been paid as little as $5 and as much as $100. We try our best, through grant applications and fundraising efforts, to pay our readers for their contributions.
Melissa Febos is the nationally bestselling author of four books, most recently, Girlhood, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, and Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative. Her fifth book, The Dry Season, is forthcoming in 2025. She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, LAMBDA Literary, The Black Mountain Institute, The British Library, the Bogliasco Foundation, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Sun, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, and New York Review of Books. Febos is a full professor at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly.
Co-sponsored by the English department and MFA program, the Emerging Writers Festival features two days of readings by five up-and-coming writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. On the second day of the festival, the authors hold a panel discussion on their experiences navigating life as a writer and the complexities of the publishing industry.
The Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series, named after the founder of Wake Forest University Press, brings to campus established and emerging fiction writers, poets, and writers of literary nonfiction each year to give literary readings and talks on creative process, and to visit creative writing workshops in the Creative Writing Minor and other courses at Wake Forest. The literary readings are often followed by a book signing and reception. These events are sometimes coordinated in collaboration with other departments at Wake Forest, with other universities in the area, and with local and state agencies such as the North Carolina Humanities Council.
Visiting authors sponsored by the series include Carmen Gimnez Smith, Jerome Rothenberg, Lia Purpura, Tracie Morris, Amanda Ngoho Reavey, Chris Abani, Gabriel Blackwell, Anne Waldman, Alejandro Zambra, Ben Lerner, Renee Gladman, Joanna Howard, Michael Leong, Brian Evenson, George Quasha, Bhanu Kapil, TaraShea Nesbit, and M. NourbeSe Philip. Visiting authors co-sponsored by the series include John Yau, Nathaniel Mackey, Rae Armantrout, Will Alexander, Ed Roberson, Andrew Joron, Madhur Anand, Ciaran Carson, Abigail Child, Jacqueline Osherow, and Kevin Berry. Additional readers over the years have included Maya Angelou, W.S. Merwin, Evie Shockley, Stuart Dybek, Natasha Trethewey, Heather McHugh, Harryette Mullen, Reginald McKnight, C.K. Williams, Julianna Baggott, Carl Phillips, Simon Armitage, Dan Chaon, Owen King, Kelly Braffet, Wilton Barnhardt, Martin Clark, Quinn Dalton, and Adam Zagajewski, among many others.
If you are in Toronto, please also keep in mind that the bookshop where I work, Another Story, is co-sponsoring an upcoming teach-in for trans allies featuring incredible trans women speakers Kai Cheng Thom and Gwen Benaway. Click on the image below for details.
One last note is that the Emerging Writers reading series in Toronto (recently voted the best reading series in the city) is hosting a trans and non-binary writers event in March. The deadline to submit has been extended to January 22nd! If you are Toronto local or adjacent, and you have not published a book, get in there!
As 2019 progressed, I decided to embrace the small joys that I was experiencing. I leaned hard in whenever something made me happy. I collected Pokmon cards and started playing PoGo after the release of the nostalgic and charming Detective Pikachu. My partner and I bought an ice cream maker, and a book called *Incredible Vegan Ice Cream* by Deena Jalal, and we made (and ate) so much inexpensive ice cream. And when I realized that teen thrillers were the kinds of books that I could read quickly, and that would suck me in and distract me from the rest of the world? Well.
These realizations completely changed and shaped my reading for the rest of the year. From realizing that this unsettling genre was my wheelhouse, my TBR swelled, I burned through so many fantastic and entertaining reads, I processed emotions, I made friends, and I discovered new authors who I had never considered picking up before.
PS, if you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving me a tip! It only takes a minute, and it allows me to keep creating content just like this, buying food for my pets, and pursuing my career as a literary agent!
Usually held on Friday evenings, Webster Readings present two readers (most often one poet and one fiction writer), each introduced by a fellow poet or fiction writer also in the graduating cohort.As the culminating event for students of the program, Webster Readings are hosted in partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Art and held in Helmut Stern Auditorium. An opportunity to hear from emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting, these readings are free and open to the public.
The Visiting Writers Reading Series brings established and emerging writers to share their work with the community. The Visiting Writers Reading Series is sponsored by the Department of English, the Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty, the Lawrence Parke Murphy and Robert Goldstein Trust, and by generous donations from the extended Whitman community.
Join us at 7 PM on the first Friday of the month for Friday Night Writes, an evening of emerging writers performing their short stories, poetry, and music. Friday Night Writes is a free event and is open to the public. We recommend arriving 15 minutes early for the event if you would like to sign up to perform.
The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting. MFA second-year students in fiction and poetry, each introduced by a peer, will share a sample of their work. Friends, family, and members of the Ann Arbor community are welcome to attend the readings both in-person and synchronously on Zoom.
The Juniper Reading Series is held during the week of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute and features our workshop faculty, guest writers, and alumni-in-residence. Institute participants attend for free. These readings are open to the public, though public seating is limited. We suggest a sliding-scale donation of $5 to $20 from members of the public attending the reading series. You can donate to our scholarship fund online through this secure link.
In association with the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Juniper is a week long immersion in the writer's life. It is time out for you and your writing, time for wild invention, and time to become part of a diverse community of acclaimed and emerging writers from all walks of life.
The Alabama Shakespeare Project (ASP) is a performance-based research collective exploring early modern entertainments. To sponsor this work, they (a) stage free readings of the plays by William Shakespeare and his contemporaries, performed by University of Alabama undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and community members; (b) facilitate performance-based research projects and experiments led by graduate students and faculty in the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies; and (c) collaborate with art-makers and scholars in the American southeast in conditions digital and live. Graduate students gain professional experience as production dramaturgs and research assistants. ASP welcomes performers from all backgrounds, identities, and communities; no previous experience is required.
Every semester the Coal Royalty and Bankhead Visiting Writers Series bring established and emerging writers to campus for readings and workshops with students. Readers for the 2019-2020 season included Lynda Barry, Kelly Link, Danez Smith , Tyehimba Jess, Alexander Chee, Tessa Fontaine, and Jessica Lee Richardson.
Hosted by UA English instructors, Pure Products brings together writers and artists from the University community for bi-monthly readings and open mic nights. Visit the Pure Products page or our Pure Products Facebook page for information about upcoming events.
The Strode Program hosts a variety of events, including symposia, workshops, conferences, and lectures by both established and emerging scholars. Students are afforded the opportunity to meet informally with guest speakers, discuss works in progress, as well as attend and respond to formal presentations. The program also hosts the Shakespeare Film Series at the historic Bama Theatre.
Common Ground is a reading series devoted to the creative work of graduate and undergraduate students. Our goal is to engage the widest spectrum of the Binghamton student writing community as we gather in solidarity and share poetry and prose in a safe and welcoming environment. Three undergraduates and three graduate readers will be featured at each event, followed by conversation and literary friendship. Common Ground welcomes writers of color, the LGBTQ community, and people of all abilities, and finds fellowship in celebrating Binghamton's creative writers. If you are interested in reading your work at a Common Ground event or would like more information, please email Alycia Calvert at acal...@binghamton.edu or Shannon Hearn at she...@binghamton.edu.
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