ÑÇÖÞÇéÉ«

Fall 2025:

Book Launch for AJ White

Thursday, September 18, 6pm - 8:00pm 
Jay S. and Jeanne Benet Alumni Lounge, Old O'Connor Hall

Join the Creative Writing Program to celebrate the launch of PhD student AJ White's debut poetry collection, Blue Loop. Selected by Chelsea Dingman for the National Poetry Series, this book offers an exploration of the path to recovery through acceptance and meditation on those qualities of the universe reflected in the self. 

Distinguished Writers Series with Shara McCallum

Wednesday, October 8, 6pm - 8:00pm 
 Jay S. and Jeanne Benet Alumni Lounge, Old O'Connor Hall

From Jamaica, and born to a Jamaican father and Venezuelan mother, Shara McCallum is the author of seven books published in the U.S. and U.K., including Behold, forthcoming in 2026, No Ruined Stone, winner of the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry, and Madwoman, winner of the 2018 OCM Bocas Caribbean Poetry Prize and the 2018 New England Poetry Club Motton Prize. Recognition for her work includes a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Musgrave Medal, a Witter Bynner Fellowship, an NEA Poetry Fellowship, the Oran Robert Perry Burke Nonfiction Award, and the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, among others. She is presently an Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Penn State.

Alumni Reading with
Jennifer Case, Dante Di Stefano, and Aggeliki Pelekidis

Wednesday, November 5, 6pm - 8:00pm 
Jay S. and Jeanne Benet Alumni Lounge, Old O'Connor Hall

Jennifer Case is the author of We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood and Sawbill: A Search for Place. Her work has appeared in journals such as Orion, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. She is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Bakeless Scholarship and Stone Canoe‘s 2014 Allen and Nirelle Galson Prize in Fiction. She teaches creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas, serves as an assistant nonfiction editor at Terrain.org, and is the supervising editor of Arkana. She holds a PhD in English with a concentration in creative writing from ÑÇÖÞÇéÉ« University and lives in central Arkansas with her family.

Dante Di Stefano is the author of five poetry collections and a chapbook, including, most recently, the book-length poem, The Widowing Radiance (Bordighera Press, 2025). His writing has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry 2018, Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. His poetry has won the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize, the Manchester Poetry Prize (U.K.), the Thayer Fellowship in the Arts, among other honors. A coeditor of the anthology Misrepresented People, Di Stefano holds a BA, MA, MAT, and a PhD in English with a concentration in creative writing from ÑÇÖÞÇéÉ«. He lives in Endwell, NY, with his wife and two children.

Aggeliki Pelekidis is the author of Unlucky Mel (Three Hills, 2024). Her writing has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Confrontation, and many more publications. She worked in public relations in New York City for many years, including as the Director of Public Affairs for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Manager of Communications for the New York Aquarium, and the Director of Marketing Communications for the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. She earned an MA and PhD in English with a creative writing concentration from ÑÇÖÞÇéÉ«. She is the associate director of first-Year writing in the Writing Initiative at ÑÇÖÞÇéÉ«.