Writer's Voice
What is Writer's Voice
Writer’s Voice is California State University, Chico’s literary arts reading series. Funded by contributions from alumni and friends, the Department of English, and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, Writer’s Voice introduces contemporary writers to citizens of the North Valley. All readings are free and open to the public.
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Spring 2024 Series
Farnaz Fatemi, Poetry
Thursday, February 29 | 7:30pm | ARTS 150
Farnaz Fatemi
Farnaz Fatemi, an Iranian American poet and writer and Santa Cruz County Poet Laureate for 2023 & 2024, is a founding member of The Hive Poetry Collective, a member of Writers of Color – Santa Cruz County, and a former Lecturer in Writing at UCSC. In summers she teaches new transfer students in UCSC’s Transfer Edge program. Her book, Sister Tongue زبان خواهر, was published in September 2022. It won the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, selected by Tracy K. Smith, won an honorable mention from the Foreword Indies, and received a Starred Review from Publisher’s Weekly. She is a California Individual Artist Fellow and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Some of her poems and lyric essays appear or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, No Tokens Journal, Nowruz Journal, Pedestal Review, Poets.org, Tab Journal, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others. More at farnazfatemi.com(opens in new window)Bonnie Tsui: "Why We Swim: A Conversation with Award-Winning Author Bonnie Tsui"
Thursday, March 7 | 5:30pm | Zoom
Click here to register for Zoom webinar (opens in new window)
Event is co-sponsored by The Humanities Center (https://www.csuchico.edu/humanitiescenter/(opens in new window))
Bonnie Tsui
Please join us for an extended conversation between award-winning author Bonnie Tsui and Rob Davidson, Humanities Center board member and English professor. In keeping with this year’s theme, Water, Professor Davidson will focus his questions on Tsui’s Why We Swim, a Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, and Sarah and the Big Wave, a children’s book about Sarah Gerhardt, the first woman to surf California’s big waves. Davidson and Tsui will explore why we are so drawn to the water, and the event will include opportunities for the audience to join with their own questions.Bonnie Tsui is a longtime contributor to The New York Times and the author of American Chinatown, winner of the 2010 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. Her book Why We Swim was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a Time magazine and NPR Best Book of the Year; it is currently being translated into ten languages. Her first children’s book, Sarah and the Big Wave, about the first woman to surf Northern California’s Mavericks, was published in 2021. Bonnie's work has been recognized and supported by Harvard University, the National Press Foundation, and the Mesa Refuge. Her new book about muscle will be published in spring 2025.
Clint Smith, Poetry
Thursday, April 11 | 3:30pm | ARTS 150
Clint Smith
Clint Smith is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism, the Stowe Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and selected by the New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2021. He is also the author of two books of poetry, the New York Times bestselling collection Above Ground and Counting Descent, which won the 2017 Literary Award for Best Poetry Book from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Free & open to the public. Masks are welcome.
The Writer’s Voice is California State University, Chico’s literary arts reading series. Funded by contributions from the Department of English and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, the Writer’s Voice introduces contemporary writers to citizens of the North Valley.
For more information about this reading, contact Rob Davidson, Professor of English, rgdavidson@csuchico.edu.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/WritersVoiceCSUChico/
Past Events
Select past Writer’s Voice events have been recorded and are available online.
- List of Previous Speakers
Spring 2023
- Yesika Salgado - Poetry
- Henry Hughes - Poetry
- Caroline Kim - Fiction
Fall 2022
- Author Jean Hegland & Graphic Novel Artist Loming
- Anna B. Moore - Fiction
- Alondra Adame - Poetry & Creative Nonfiction
- Rae Gouirand - Poetry
- Sarah Pape - Creative Nonfiction
- Graduate Student Reading - Poetry & Fiction
Spring 2022
- Nicole Stellon O'Donnell - Poetry
Fall 2021
- Tom Lin - Fiction
Spring 2021
- Lia Purpura
Fall 2020
- Fred Arroyo
Fall 2019
- Juan Alvarado Valdivia
- Peg Alford Pursell
- Nancy Au
- Ingrid Keriotis
Spring 2019
- Jamel Brinkley - Fiction
- Mai Der Vang - Fiction, Creative Nonfiction & Poetry
- Rob Davidson - Fiction
- Jose Antonio Rodriguez - Poetry & Creative Nonfiction
Fall 2018
- Michelle Tea - Poetry
- Lynn Freed - Nonfiction
Spring 2018
- Sasha Pimentel - Poetry
- Beth Spencer - Poetry
- Ryan Van Meter - Nonfiction
- Luke Davies - Poetry/Fiction
Fall 2017
- Graduate Student Reading - Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction
- Naomi Williams - Fiction
- Mary Troy - Fiction
- Rob Davidson - Fiction
Spring 2017
- Neal Snidow - Fiction
Fall 2016
- Graduate Student Reading - Poetry, Fiction, and Creative Nonfiction
- Martha Collins - Poetry
Spring 2016
- Louis B. Jones - Fiction
- Sean Hill - Poetry
Fall 2015
- Christian Kiefer - Fiction
- George Keithley - Fiction
Spring 2015
- Carole Simmons Oles - Poetry
- Chris Cokinos - Creative Nonfiction
- Dimitri Keriotis - Fiction
- Gary Thompson - Poetry and Fiction
- Matthew Frank - Creative Nonfiction
- Steve Gutierrez - Poetry and Fiction
Fall 2014
- Joan Frank - Fiction & Nonfiction
- Wendy C. Ortiz - Memoir
- Doug Rice - Fiction & Nonfiction
Spring 2014
- Joanne Harris Allred - Poetry
- Dr. Daryl Farmer - Nonfiction
- Brian Turner - Poetry & Memoir
Fall 2013
- Brenda Hillman - Poetry
- Jon Raymond - Fiction
- Peggy Shumaker - Poetry
Spring 2013
- Martha Collins - Poetry
- Henry Hughes - Poetry
- Patricia Ann McNair - Fiction
Fall 2012
- Fred Arroyo - Fiction
- Nick Flynn - Poetry & Memoir
- Rae Gouirand - Poetry
- Andrew Lam - Fiction
- Martin Puchner
Spring 2012
- Camille T. Dungy - Poetry
- Steven Edwards - Nonfiction
- Troy Jollimore - Poetry
Fall 2011
- Jeanne Clark - Poetry
Spring 2011
- Laleh Khadivi - Fiction
- Sally McNall - Poetry
- Carol Sklenicka - Fiction & Biography
- Rob Magnuson Smith - Fiction