Visiting Writers Reading Series

Thursday, April 3, 6 p.m. Hunter Conservatory, Kimball Theatre Please note: Idra Novey is unable to visit in person, but will participate via a virtual platform. Event page

Idra Novey is a poet, novelist and translator. Her recent novel “Take What You Need” was a New York Times Notable Book of 2023, a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize. Her second poetry collection “Exit, Civilian” was chosen by Patricia Smith for the National Poetry Series. She is the co-translator with Ahmad Nadalizadeh of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian’s, “Lean Against This Late Hour,” a finalist for the PEN America Poetry in Translation Prize in 2021. Novey’s fiction and poetry have been translated into a dozen languages and she’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Her new book of poems “Soon & Wholly” was released in fall 2024. She teaches creative writing at Princeton University.

Nathan Harris holds an MFA from the Michener Center at the University of Texas. His debut novel, “The Sweetness of Water” (Little Brown, 2021), was the summer selection of Oprah’s Book Club. It was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was included in President Obama’s Summer Reading List. Harris was honored as one of 5 Under 35 by the National Book Foundation and has had his work featured in The Best American Short Stories of 2023. He currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Georgia Cloepfil’s nonfiction debut, “The Striker and the Clock” was published by Riverhead (U.S.) and Bloomsbury (U.K.) in July, 2024. Her other writing can be found in The Yale Review, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, n+1, Colorado Review, Joyland and Epiphany, among other places. Select essays have been featured on Longreads, The Rumpus, and WBUR Boston’s Only a Game. She holds an MFA from the University of Idaho and works at Whitman College as Assistant Women’s Soccer Coach and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Rhetoric.

Noé Álvarez is the author of “Accordion Eulogies” (Catapult, 2024) and “Spirit Run” (Catapult, 2020). He was born in the desert and raised in the weeds.

Lia Purpura is the author of ten collections, including essays, poems and translations. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for “On Looking” (essays), her awards include Guggenheim, NEA and Fulbright Fellowships, as well as five Pushcart Prizes, the AWP Award and others. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Orion, The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, Agni, Emergence and elsewhere. Purpura has served as Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Loyola University; other teaching venues include the Rainier Writing Workshop, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA program, as well as workshops at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility and the Glenwood Life Recovery Center. Her newest collections are “It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful” (poems) and “All the Fierce Tethers” (essays).