A brief history of the Kelly Writers Series
The James and Marilou Kelly Writers Series was established in 1998 with gifts from Marilou Morrell Kelly, Class of 1955. Marilou Kelly, who passed away on July 7, 2014, owned a marvelous bookstore in St. Charles, Illinois, for a number of years. An avid reader and lover of books, she frequently persuaded authors to give readings in the St. Charles community and became friends with a number of them. James J. Kelly, who passed away January 8, 1994, was an executive with Goldman Sachs in Chicago, former chair of the 麻豆区 Board of Trustees, and former chair of the Sesquicentennial Campaign. Generous gifts from Professor Emeritus of English J. David Field provide additional support.
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The Kelly Writers Series brings world-renowned poets, playwrights, and authors of fiction and nonfiction for readings and discussion to DePauw's campus. All events are free and open to the public.
Cathy Linh Che
Cathy Linh Che is a Vietnamese American writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of听听(Alice James Books) and co-author, with Kyle Lucia Wu, of the children鈥檚 book听听(Haymarket Books). She is working on a poetry manuscript, a creative nonfiction manuscript, and a short documentary on her parents鈥� experiences as refugees who played extras on听Apocalypse Now.听Her video installation听Appocalips听is an Open Call commission with The Shed NY. She works as Executive Director at Kundiman, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to nurturing writers and readers of Asian American literature.
Photo credit: Shawn Poynter.
Zo毛 Bossiere
February 19, 2025, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center.
Zo毛 Bossiere (they/she) is a writer from Tucson, Arizona. They are the managing editor of听Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction. as well as the coeditor of two anthologies: The Best of Brevity (Rose Metal Press, 2020) and The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins (Wayne State UP, 2023).
Bossiere's debut,听Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir (Abrams Books, May 21 2024), chronicles their experiences growing up as a trans boy in a Tucson, Arizona trailer park.
Faculty Reading
September 4, 2024, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center.
Welcome the new school year with an event featuring DePauw's talented English faculty, reading from their own works. Join us to hear from Samuel Autman, Debby Geis, Eugene Gloria, Ivelisse Rodriguez and Greg Schwipps. Special guest Marcus Hayes, Dean of Creative School, will share detail of the Creative School's official launch on September 25th.
Ronit Plank
October 2, 2024, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center.
Ronit鈥檚 short collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE is winner of Hidden River Arts鈥� Eludia Award and the Page Turner Award for short stories. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was Finalist in both the Housatonic Awards Awards and the Indie Excellence Awards and was a Book Riot Best True Crime Book. She received her MFA from Pacific University, is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review, and hosts the popular writing podcast Let鈥檚 Talk Memoir.
Lars Horn
April 17, 2024, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center.
Lars Horn is a writer and translator working in literary and experimental non-fiction. Their first book, VOICE OF THE FISH, won the 2020 Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, the 2023 Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award, and was named an Honor Book for the 2023 Stonewall Israel Fishman Nonfiction Book Award as well as an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection.
They are the recipient of the Tin House Without Borders Residency and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers鈥� Conference, the Kenyon Writers Workshops, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Horn鈥檚 writing has appeared in听Granta, the听Virginia Quarterly Review, the听Kenyon Review, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, and elsewhere.
Photo Credit: Richard Allen
S.A. Cosby
March 6, 2024, 7:30 pm, Thompson Recital Hall, Green Center for the Performing Arts, 605 S College Ave.
S.A. Cosby is an Anthony, Barry, and Macavity Award-winning writer from southeastern Virginia. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers 鈥淩azorblade Tears鈥� and 鈥淎ll Sinners Bleed,鈥� which were recommended on Barack Obama鈥檚 summer reading list and named a best book of the year by NPR, The Washington Post, Time and more.
Cosby鈥檚 short fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines. When not writing, he is an avid hiker and chess player. His latest thriller is 鈥淎ll The Sinners Bleed.鈥�
Faculty Reading: Samuel Autman, Debby Geis, Joe Heithaus, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Greg Schwipps
February 14, 2024,听7:00 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center.
Prize winning novelists and poets, extraordinary dramatists, spoken word artists and musicians, DePauw鈥檚 English faculty is rich with professors committed to language, both written and performed.
James Fujinami Moore
November 1, 2023, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center
James's debut poetry collection is听indecent hours听(Four Way Books, 2022), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award in Poetry and finalist for the Golden Poppy's Martin Cruz Smith Award & the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in听Asimov's Science Fiction, Barrow Street's听4x2,听The Brooklyn Rail,听Guesthouse,听Jet Fuel Review,听The Margins, the听Pacifica Literary Review, and听Prelude. He has received fellowships from Poets House, Bread Loaf, and the Frost Place, and received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016.
Agata Szczeszak-Brewer
October 4, 2023, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center.
Join us for a reading from Agata Szczeszak-Brewer, DePauw's guest for the evening from Wabash College.
Agata came to the United States from Poland as a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholar in 2002 and later completed her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina in 2006. She is Professor of English and John P. Collett Chair in Rhetoric at Wabash College, where she teaches courses on South African Literature, Irish Literature, James Joyce, 20th-century British and Irish Literature, and Postcolonial Theory, among others.
She has published two books:听Empire and Pilgrimage in Conrad and Joyce听(University Press of Florida, 2010) and听Critical Approaches to Joseph Conrad听(University of South Carolina Press, 2015). Her current book project is a comparative study of Irish and South African literatures.
Camille T. Dungy
April 5, 2023, 7:30 pm, Thompson Recital Hall (within the Green Center for the Performing Arts)
Camille's latest book听Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden听will be published on May 2, 2023.
A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Dungy鈥檚 further honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry.
Ivelisse Rodriguez
March 22, 2023, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center.
We are thrilled to welcome Ivelisse Rodriguez as a Kelly Writers Series guest and as DePauw's newest member of the English department next fall.
Her debut short story collection Love War Stories was a 2019 PEN/Faulkner finalist and a 2018 Foreword Reviews INDIES finalist. It was noted as a must read or best book of the year in over thirty publications, including O magazine, Women鈥檚 Health, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and more. She is a contributing arts editor for the Boston Review, where she acquires fiction. She is a 2022 Letras Boricuas fellow, a Tanne Foundation award winner, a Kimbilio fellow, and a VONA/Voices alum. She earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College and a Ph.D. in English-Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
DePauw Faculty Reading
March 1, 2023, 7:00 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center.
Prize winning novelists and poets, extraordinary dramatists, spoken word artists and musicians, DePauw鈥檚 English faculty is rich with professors committed to language, both written and performed.
Join us for a night celebrating the work of professors Debby Geis, Eugene Gloria, Joe Heithaus, Greg Schwipps, and Chris White who will be introduced by a talented group of students.
Michael X. Wang
September 7, 2022, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center
The Kelly Writers Series is excited to start the Fall 2022 Semester welcoming Michael X. Wang, winner of the GLCA's New Writers Award for Further News of Defeat.
Michael X. Wang was born in Fenyang, a coal-mining city in China's mountainous Shanxi Province. He immigrated to the United States when he was six, and holds a PhD in Literature from Florida State University and an MFA in Fiction from Purdue. His story collection, Further News of Defeat, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges Association's New Writer Award. It was also a finalist for the CLMP Firecracker Award. His debut novel, Lost in the Long March, comes out November 1st from The Overlook Press. He is currently at work on two novel projects.
Siel Ju '00
October 5, 2022, 7:30 pm, Peeler Auditorium, Peeler Art Center
Siel Ju writes the newsletter and is the author of Cake Time, winner of the Red Hen Press Fiction Manuscript Award. Her stories and poems appear in ZYZZYVA, The Southern Review, Confrontation, and other places. The recipient of residencies from The Anderson Center at Tower View and Vermont Studio Center, Siel is a DePauw class of 2000 alumna and holds a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California.