ASU’s Creative Writing Program

Stellar Alumni Reading Series

Stellar Alumni Reading Series

Superstition Review
Jacqueline Balderrama | Venita Blackburn

Join the Creative Writing Program in the Department of English at ASU in welcoming poet Jacqueline Balderrama and fiction writer Venita Blackburn at the Stellar Alumni Reading Series event on Thursday, March 3, 2022, at 7 p.m. This event is free of charge, in-person, and open to the public.

It will be held at Tempe Campus in the Pima Auditorium Room 230. The location is Memorial Union (MU) 301 E. Orange St.

This is a great opportunity to hear the works of some of ASU’s star graduates. Learn more about them below to see just how awesome they are!

Jacqueline Balderrama is the author of “Now in Color” (Perugia Press, 2020) and the chapbook “Nectar and Small” (Finishing Line Press, 2019). She serves as a poetry editor for Iron City Magazine, has been involved in the Letras Latinas literary initiative, and the ASU Prison Education Program. Currently, she’s a Virginia G. Piper Fellow-in-Residence and Clinical Assistant Professor at ASU.

Works by Venita Blackburn have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s, the Paris Review and others. She received the Prairie Schooner book prize in fiction for her collected stories, “Black Jesus and Other Superheroes” in 2017. She is the founder of the literary nonprofit Live, Write (livewriteworkshop.com), which provides free creative writing workshops for communities of color. Blackburn’s second collection of stories, “How to Wrestle a Girl,” was published in the fall of 2021. She is an Assistant Professor of creative writing at California State University, Fresno.

#ArtLitPhx: Brenda Hillman & Robert Hass at the Phoenix Art Museum

Superstition Review

Robert-Hass-Brenda-Hillman-Oct7

The University of Arizona Poetry Center presents distinguished poets Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass at the Phoenix Art Museum. The event takes place on Friday, October 7th at 7:00 p.m. After the reading, there will be a short Q&A and a book signing. The Poetry Center is proud to partner with the Phoenix Art Museum with additional support from ASU’s Creative Writing Program, Superstition Review, Four Chambers Press, and the Literary & Prologue Society of the Southwest.

Brenda Hillman is the author of nine collections of poetry: White Dress, Fortress, Death Tractates, Bright Existence, Loose Sugar, Cascadia, Pieces of Air in the Epic, Practical Water, for which she won the LA Times Book Award for Poetry, and Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire, which received the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Northern California Book Award for Poetry. Among the awards Hillman has received are the 2012 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, the 2005 William Carlos Williams Prize for poetry, and Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2016 she was named Academy of American Poets Chancellor.

Robert Hass has published many books of poetry including Field Guide, Praise, Human Wishes, and Sun Under Wood, as well as a book of essays on poetry, Twentieth Century Pleasures. Hass translated many of the works of Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet, Czeslaw Milosz, and he edited Selected Poems: 1954-1986 by Tomas Transtromer, The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa; Poet’s Choice: Poems for Everyday Life; and Modernist Women Poets: An Anthology (with Paul Ebenkamp). He was the guest editor of the 2001 edition of Best American Poetry. His essay collection Now & Then, which includes his Washington Post articles, was published in April 2007. As US Poet Laureate (1995-1997), his deep commitment to environmental issues led him to found River of Words (ROW), an organization that promotes environmental and arts education in affiliation with the Library of Congress Center for the Book.

Leah Marché will be opening the reading. Leah Marché is an arts entrepreneur, performance poet and journalist/writer. In 2005, she co-founded BlackPoet Ventures, a Valley-based performance arts company that produces spoken word theatrical performances.

For more information and updates, please visit the Facebook event.

#ArtLitPhx: MFA Reading Series – Sarah Vap, Dexter L. Booth, and Patricia Colleen Murphy

Superstition Review

MFA Reading Series - ASUPoets Sarah Vap, Dexter L. Booth, and Patricia Colleen Murphy will read from their recent work at Hayden Library on the Tempe Campus as part of the MFA Alumni Reading Series, presented by ASU’s Creative Writing Program. The event takes place on Thursday, September 22nd. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the reading begins at 7:00 p.m. A book signing and reception with light refreshments will follow the reading.

Sarah Vap received her MFA from Arizona State University. Vap is the author of six collections of poetry. Her most recent book, Viability, was selected by Mary Jo Bang for the National Poetry Series, and was released by Penguin in 2016.

Dexter L. Booth earned an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. His collection Scratching the Ghost was selected by Major Jackson for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

Patricia Colleen Murphy, a graduate of ASU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. Her collection, Hemming Flames, was selected by Stephen Dunn for the May Swenson Poetry Award.

The event is free of charge and is open to the public. For more information please visit the ASU page and/or the Facebook event.

U of A Poetry Center Fall 2016 Phoenix Reading Series

Superstition Review

U of A Poetry CenterSuperstition Review is thrilled to co-sponsor the University of Arizona Poetry Center Phoenix Reading Series at the Phoenix Art Museum.

On September 2, 2016, Solmaz Sharif and Danniel Schoonebeek will read. Solmaz Sharif’s work has been recognized with a “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize, and multiple fellowships. Danniel Schoonebeek was awarded a Ruth Lily and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and his second book of poems was a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series.

On October 7, 2016, Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass will read. Brenda Hillman authored nine collections of poetry and received the William Carlos Williams Prize for Poetry and several fellowships.  Robert Hass is a former U.S. Poet Laureate, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow, and National Book Critics’ Circle Award winner.