Writing Now, Reading Now Series

Fiction Reading by Karen Lee Boren

Tuesday, September 23, Reception at 5:30 pm /Reading at 6

Karen Lee Boren is the author of four works of fiction, many of which are set in Wisconsin. Her newest, Ways Home: Stories, will be published September 9. Her novel Secret Waltz (Flexible Press) appeared in 2022, and her 2006 novella, Girls in Peril, was the premier publication for the Tin House New Voices series and a Barnes and Noble Discover selection. Her story collection, Mother Tongue was published by New Rivers Press in 2015. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the winner of the 2018 Wundor Editions Fiction Prize. Her writing has appeared in many venues, including The Florida Review, Epoch, Cream City Review, and The American Journal of Poetry. She received an MFA from Wichita State in 1994 and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin. She teaches at Rhode Island College.

Poetry Reading by Traci Brimhall

Tuesday, October 7, Reception at 5:30 pm/Reading at 6

Traci Brimhall is the Poet Laureate of Kansas and the author of five poetry collections. Her latest, Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon Press 2024), grieves a divorce and a new diagnosis. In these poems, cycles of loss, heartbreak, family trauma, and chronic illness appear. When the body becomes a site the poet “cannot live in or leave,” she reaches for the slow, messy, and imperfect process of healing. Told through various forms—aubades, a crown of prose sonnets, and admissions essay—Love Prodigal says yes to second (and third and fourth)

chances, knowing that the heart gets bigger every time it heals. Traci Brimhall received an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a PhD from Michigan State University. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Believer, Slate, The New Republi,c and Best American Poetry. She teaches at Kansas State.

Fiction Reading by Christie Hodgen

Tuesday, November 11, Reception at 5:30 pm /Reading at 6

Christie Hodgen is the author of four books of fiction—A Jeweler’s Eye for Flaw (UMASS, 2003), Hello, I Must Be Going (W.W. Norton, 2006), Elegies for the Brokenhearted (W.W. Norton, 2010) and Boy Meets Girl (New Issues Press, 2022). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in dozens of magazines. Her awards include a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the AWP Prize in Short Fiction, the AWP Prize for the Novel, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. She teaches at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and is the editor-in-chief of New Letters.

Thank you to our program partners:

Our fall series is a collaboration of the English Department, Ulrich Museum, and Watermark Books & Café. Its main sponsor is Wichita State’s Department of Women’s, Ethnicity, and Intersectional Studies, which transitioned into a program housed in the Department of English. To celebrate this new partnership, the annual lecture series, Words by Women, will focus on Midwestern women writers.