Fall 2017 events:
September 14: Leslie Jamison: Compassion and Confession
Leslie Jamison, novelist and essayist, wonders about the moral complexities of writing other peoples’ lives. She will discuss her experiences writing about a variety of subjects, including long distance runners, prison inmates, whale fanatics, and medical patients—and the various ways she has purposefully and explicitly introduced subjectivity into these accounts of others’ lives.
Thursday, September 14, 2017 @ 5:30pm, Athenaeum, Claremont McKenna College.
September 19: Junot Díaz in Conversation
“Junot Díaz has one of the most distinctive and magnetic voices in contemporary fiction: limber, streetwise, caffeinated and wonderfully eclectic.” —The New York Times
Junot Díaz’s fiction is probing and funny. It’s also situated at the often challenging and always complex center of first-generation American experience. Díaz, Dominican Republican–born and New Jersey–bred, has a knack for capturing the messy, maudlin, and majestic dramas of finding one’s way in a brand-new world. The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and This Is How You Lose Her visits Scripps to reflect on, among other things, the ways that literature and politics intersect.
Tuesday, September 19 @ 6:00pm, Garrison Theater, Scripps College. Registration required.
September 26: Cuz: A Reading and Conversation with Danielle Allen
“A searing memoir and sharp social critique.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Political theorist and director of Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Danielle Allen’s work usually occupies a scholarly realm. This autumn, it takes a decidedly more personal turn with Cuz, a memoir that reflects on the American criminal justice system. With an investigative journalist’s tack, Allen explores how her cousin’s arrest for an attempted carjacking as a teenager began a complicated, 15-year year odyssey that contributed to his death at the age of 29. Allen visits Scripps for a reading and discussion of this poignant and devastating story.
Tuesday, September 26 @ 12:15pm, Hampton Room, Scripps College
September 27: Hilton Als: The Collaboration of Richard Avedon and James Baldwin
It is 1964, and the Civil Rights Act has just passed. “Nothing Personal,” a much anticipated photo-book that combined the talents of photographer Richard Avedon and writer James Baldwin, appears with much fanfare. But the major issue of the day—the struggle toward integration—is nowhere mentioned in it. New Yorker theater critic Hilton Als will explore the dimensions of this complicated, nearly dismissed work.
Wednesday, September 27 @ 5:30pm, Athenaeum, Claremont McKenna College
September 28: Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer: Alberto Ledesma
Join us for an evening with artist and author Alberto Ledesma as he shares his autobiographical graphic novel, Diary of a Reluctant Dreamer, a collection of moving vignettes chronicling his life as an undocumented migrant and his journey in academia. A book sale and signing will follow his talk.
Thursday, September 28 @ 7:00pm, Rose Hills Theatre, Pomona College
October 2: John Stratton Hawley: The Hindi Poet Surdas and His Visual Legacy
The great 16th-century poet Hindi Surdas, a great devotee of Krishna, is said to have been blind. John “Jack” Stratton Hawley, professor of religion at Barnard College, Columbia University, wonders and explains how the poet could have seen what he saw and also addresses why he is seen so frequently in illustrated manuscripts.
Monday, October 2 @ 5:30pm, Athenaeum, Claremont McKenna College
October 5: Poetry Reading with Will Alexander
Will Alexander is the author of Compression & Purity, Across the Vapour Gulf, and many other books. He is teaching a poetry workshop at Pomona College in Fall 2017.
Thursday, October 5, 2017 @ 4:15pm, Ena Thompson Reading Room, Crookshank 108, Pomona College
October 9: Poetry and Petit Fours
Come celebrate the inauguration of Pomona College’s 10th President, G. Gabrielle Starr, with poetry of the 18th Century, with petits fours, and finger sandwiches.
Want to read a poem? Contact Professor Sarah Raff.
Monday, October 9, 2017 @ 4:15pm, Peter Stanley Patio, Pomona college
November 2: Poetry Reading with Judith Goldman
Judith Goldman is the author of l.b.; or, catenaries, and agon. She teaches in the Poetics Program at the University at Buffalo.
Thursday, November 2, 2017 @ 4:15pm, Ena Thompson Reading Room, Crookshank 108, Pomona College
November 3: Poetry Reading and Art Show, featuring Vievee Francis
Vievee Francis is the author of Forest Primeval (Northwestern University Press, 2016), winner the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. She is also the author of Horse in the Dark, (Northwestern University Press, 2012), which won the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection, and Blue-Tail Fly (Wayne State University, 2006). Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals, textbooks, and anthologies, including Best American Poetry (2010 & 2014) and Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry. In 2009 she received a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and most recently the 2016 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She serves as an Associate Editor of Callaloo and an associate professor of English in creative writing at Dartmouth College.
Friday, November 3, 2017 @ 6:00pm, Peggy Phelps and East Galleries, 251 E. 10th Street, Claremont Graduate University
November 9: Sorting of the Ways: An Evening of Live Poetry, Performance, and Music
Poet and CMC professor emeritus Ricardo Quinones will be joined by actors and live music in a reading and discussion of his narrative and lyrical poems.
Thursday, November 9, 2017 @ 5:30pm, Athenaeum, Claremont McKenna College
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Other campus events can be found by following Pitzer Literary Series on Facebook and joining the 5C Wordsmiths Facebook group.
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