University of North Texas 
The UNT Visiting Writers Series brings nationally and internationally renowned authors to campus for readings and book siginings.
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All events are free and open to the public - Join us!
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Spring 2025 Events
UNT's Visiting Writers Series presents Julie Otsuka
Please join us for the latest installment of UNT's Visiting Writers Series, featuring award-winning novelist Julie Otsuka.
When: Wednesday, February 26, 2025
Where: 4PM - Craft Talk and Q&A in Curry Hall 103
8PM - Reading and Signing in Union 333B
Julie Otsuka is an award-winning novelist born in Palo Alto, California. After studying art as an undergraduate at Yale, she received an MFA in writing from Columbia University in 1999 and soon adapted her Master’s thesis into the first two chapters of her critically-acclaimed debut novel, When the Emperor Was Divine (Knopf, 2002). Drawing on research, family history, and personal experience to paint a portrait of Japanese American incarceration camps during the Second World War, Emperor has since been assigned to incoming freshmen at more than sixty colleges and universities.
Her second novel, The Buddha in the Attic (Knopf, 2011), was named winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award, France’s Prix Femina Étranger,
the Albatros Literaturpreis, the Langum Prize for American Historical Fiction, and
was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and
the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It was also selected as Best Book of
the Year by the San Francisco Chronicle and Boston Globe, a Notable Book by the New
York Times, and a Top Ten Book by Library Journal and Vogue. Her latest novel, The Swimmers (Knopf, 2022), won the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was a finalist
for the Gregor Von Rezzori Award. Otsuka’s other honors include receiving a Guggenheim
Fellowship and an Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of
Arts and Letters.
Copies of Otsuka's novels will be available for sale and signing, courtesy of UNT Barnes & Noble.
UNT's Visiting Writers Series presents Sidney Thompson
When: March 20, 2025
Where: 8PM - Reading and Signing in Curry Hall 203
Dr. Sidney Thompson is the author of the award-winning trilogy of historical novels about Bass Reeves, a legendary African-American lawman of the Old West. The first book of this trilogy, Follow the Angels, Follow the Doves (Bison Books, 2020), received the 2021 International Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society Book Award for Historical Fiction, the Will Rogers Medallion Award for Western Fiction, the Oklahoma Book Award for Fiction, the Spur Award for Best Western Novel, the Peacemaker Award for Best First Western Novel, and was named a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award for Historical Fiction. The second book of the series, Hell on the Border (Bison Books, 2021), was named a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award Winner for Western Fiction and was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Award for Historical Fiction. Both are currently being adapted for the Paramount+ miniseries Lawmen: Bass Reeves. The third and final book, titled The Forsaken and the Dead (Bison Books, 2023), was named the National Indie Excellence Award Winner for Western Fiction and was a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Award for Historical Fiction.
His other works include a collection of poetry, titled You/Wee: Poems from a Father (Prolific Press, 2018); Sideshow: Stories (River City, 2006), winner of Foreword INDIES Silver Award for Short Story Collection of the Year; and Kudzu's Enormous New Life (Atmosphere Press, 2022), a middle-grade novel about the unlikely friendship that develops on a Mississippi farm between a precocious chipmunk, a stray German shepherd, and a three-year-old boy on the autism spectrum.
Dr. Thompson currently works out of Texas Christian University, serving as Writing Consultant for the William L. Adams Center for Writing, as well as a professor of composition and creative writing for the English Department and African-American literature for the Master of Liberal Arts program. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University and a Ph.D. in American literature from the University of North Texas.
Copies of his novels will be available for sale and signing, courtesy of UNT Barnes & Noble.
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Spring 2024 Events
UNT's Visiting Writers Series presents Andrew Boryga
Please join us for the latest installment of UNT's Visiting Writers Series, featuring Andrew Boryga and his debut novel, Victim.
When: Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Where: 4PM - Craft Talk and Q&A in Curry 103
8PM - Reading and Signing in Art 223 (in the CVAD building, located at the corner
of W Mulberry and S Welch)
Andrew Boryga began his career writing for a local newspaper in the Bronx at age 16. Two years later, he had worked his way into an internship with The New York Times. Since then, his nonfiction work has appeared frequently in the Times, as well as The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, The Daily Beast, and many other outlets. Now, his debut novel, titled Victim, is being released by Penguin Random House. Find a snippet of it here: https://lithub.com/victim/.
"A thrilling work that requires a sense of openness and surrender, not only does [Victim] place the onus on us to decide whether Javi is a victim, a victimizer or both, it also forces us to interrogate our own complicity in the commodification of being a casualty." - New York Times
"A pointed satire of the culture of victimhood… Boryga's experiences as a journalist making a name for himself just as society was grappling with diversity inform this razor-sharp satire of the ways race and class can be exploited." - Washington Post
Copies will be available for sale and signing.
Add this date to your UNT Event Calendar here: https://calendar.unt.edu/event/unts-visiting-writers-series-presents-andrew-boryga.
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UNT's Alumni Reading Series presents Matt Morton and Jessica Murray
Join us for a reading and book-signing with alumni Matt Morton and Jessica Murray.
Thursday, March 7th, 2024
Where: ART 223 (in CVAD Building)
When: 8 PM
MATT MORTON
Matt Morton is the author of Improvisation Without Accompaniment, winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, selected by Patricia Smith (BOA Editions, 2020), and the chapbook What Passes Here for Mountains (Carnegie Mellon, 2022). His poems have appeared in AGNI, Gettysburg Review, Harvard Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Missouri Review, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Program, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. He holds a BA from the University of Texas at Austin, an MFA from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, and a PhD in English from the University of North Texas. He serves as associate editor for 32 Poems and teaches high school English and creative writing in Missoula, Montana.
Website: mattmortonpoetry.com
JESSICA MURRAY
Jessica Murray is the author of the poetry collection Breakfast in Fur (Galileo Press, 2022). Her poems, essays, reviews, and one poetry manifesto appear in the Birmingham Review, The Boiler, Cherry Tree, Cortland Review, Free State Review, Hapden-Sydney Review, Memorious, Painted Bride Quarterly, and other journals. She has an MFA from University of Florida and a doctorate from University of North Texas and lives in Austin, Texas.
Website: murrayjessica.com
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Previous Series
For audio files of previous visiting writers click here.
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Please join us for a conversation with James Marcus, the former editor of Harper's Magazine. We'll hear about how personal essays, short stories, and poems were selected for the magazine, how new writers broke in, the relationship between contributor and editor, and balancing life as an editor and creative writer. Then, in the evening, please hear Mr. Marcus read from new work.
James Marcus
Conversation / Q&A about creative writers breaking into top magazines
James Marcus was the editor of Harper's Magazine. His personal essays and other work have appeared in The Best American Essays, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, The American Scholar, VQR, The Guardian, and The Nation. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut and seven translations from the Italian, including Giacomo Casanova's The Duel.
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Laird Hunt
A former United Nations press officer and current Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University, Laird Hunt is the author of 8 novels, a collection of stories and two book-length translations from the French. Kind One was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and won the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Fiction, and Neverhome won the Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine and Italy's Bridge Prize and was shortlisted for the Prix Femina Étranger. His reviews and essays have been published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the Irish Times and the Los Angeles Times, and his fiction has appeared in many literary journals here and abroad.
Ada Limon
Ada Limón is the author of five books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was named one of the top 5 poetry books of the year by the Washington Post. Her fourth book Bright Dead Things was named a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She serves on the faculty of Queens University of Charlotte Low Residency M.F.A program, and the online and summer programs for the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. She also works as a freelance writer in Lexington, Kentucky.
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David Keplinger
Another City
2019 UNT Rilke Prize
David Keplinger is a poet and translator. His collections of poems include The Most Natural Thing, The Prayers of Others, The Clearing, The Rose Inside and, most recently, Another City. His translations include Carsten René Nielsen's World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors and House Inspections, a Lannan Translations Selection; his most recent translation is Jan Wagner's The Art of Topiary. Keplinger's work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, and The Writer's Almanac, and has been translated and included in anthologies in China, Germany, Denmark, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere. The recipient of two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Keplinger has received support from the Soros Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the D.C. Council on Arts and Humanities, and the Danish Council on the Arts. He has also received the T.S. Eliot Award, the Colorado Book Award, the Cavafy Prize from Poetry International and The Erksine Poetry Prize from Smartish Place. Keplinger teaches in the MFA Program at American University in Washington, DC.
You can find more information about the UNT Rilke Prize and a list of our previous winners here: /creative-writing/unt-rilke-prize
Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for "her grace and intelligence in writing." She is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Robinson's nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country, which was nominated for a National Book Award. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Iowa City.
Fall 2018
Eduardo Corral
Photo: Matt Valentine
Eduardo C. Corral's first book, Slow Lightning, won the Yale Series of Younger Poets competition in 2011. His poems have appeared in Ambit, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and Poetry Magazine. He's the recipient of residencies from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He's also the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Hodder Fellowship and the National Holmes Poetry Prize, both from Princeton University. He teaches in the MFA program in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University.
Colin Barrett
Colin Barrett
Colin Barrett's first collection of stories, Young Skins, was originally published by Stinging Fly Press in 2013. It won the 2014 Frank O'Conner International Short Story Prize, The Guardian First Book Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Colin was one of the 5 under 35 honorees for The National Book Foundation in the United States in 2015. Young Skins has been translated into 8 languages so far and one of the stories, Calm With Horses, is being made into a feature film produced by DNC films, Film4 and Element Pictures. Colin's short stories and nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, A Public Space, the New Statesman, The Guardian and other magazines and journals. In 2018 he was selected as one of 4 protégés for the Rolex Arts Initiative.
Lucas Mann
Lucas Mann is the author of Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere, which earned a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. His essays and stories have appeared in Guernica, BuzzFeed, Slate, Wigleaf, and The Kenyon Review, among others. He has received fellowships from United States Artists and The National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches writing at The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and lives in Providence, RI.
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Spring 2018
Ruth Ellen Kocher
Ruth Ellen Kocher is the author of seven books of poetry, including Third Voice (Tupleo Press, 2016), Ending in Planes, winner of the Noemi Poetry Prize, Goodbye Lyric: The Gigans and Lovely Gun (The Sheep Meadow Press, 2014) and domina Un/blued (Tupelo Press 2013). Her poems have been translated into Persian in the Iranian literary magazine, She'r, and have appeared in various anthologies including: Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poets, Black Nature, From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great, An Anthology for Creative Writers: The Garden of Forking Paths. She has received grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Yaddo, and Cave Canem. She is currently an Associate Dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder where she teaches Poetry, Poetics, and Literature in the undergraduate and MFA writing programs. http://www.ruthellenkocher.org/
Paul Beatty
Paul Beatty is the author of the novels, Tuff, Slumberland, and The White Boy Shuffle, and two poetry collections Big Bank Take Little Bank and Joker, Joker, Deuce. He was the editor of Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor. Paul grew up in California and moved to the East Coast for his higher education. Paul has an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College and an MA in psychology from Boston University. In 1990, he was the first person crowned as Grand Poetry Slam Champion of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, which led to his first book deal. Paul has performed poetry on MTV and PBS. Paul is the recipient of the 2016 Man Booker Prize for his most recent novel, The Sellout. The Sellout is also the winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and was named one of the best books of 2015 by The New York Times Book Review and the Wall Street Journal. He currently lives in New York City. https://us.macmillan.com/author/paulbeatty
Paul Beatty wins the Man Booker Prize: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/business/media/paul-beatty-wins-man-b...
2018 UNT Rilke Prize
Allison Benis White
Allison Benis White's Please Bury Me in This, published by Four Way Books, has won the 2018 UNT Rilke Prize. The $10,000 prize recognizes a book written by a mid-career poet and published in the preceding year that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision. A Q&A and reception for White will be held on Wednesday, April 11, at UNT on the Square and a campus reading will take place on Thursday, April 12, 2018.
Allison Benis White is the author of Please Bury Me in This and Small Porcelain Head, selected by Claudia Rankine for the Levis Prize in Poetry and named a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the California Book Award. Her first book, Self-Portrait with Crayon, received the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Book Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, 2017 Pushcart Prize XLI: Best of the Small Presses, and elsewhere. She has received honors and awards from the San Francisco Foundation, the Academy of American Poets, and Poets & Writers magazine. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside. http://www.allisonbeniswhite.com/
Click here for a feature on KERA's Art & Seek about Allison Benis White and the UNT Rilke Prize.
To find out more about the UNT Rilke Prize visit: /creative-writing/unt-rilke-prize
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Fall 2017
Jaquira Díaz
Jaquira Díaz is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, an NEA fellowship to the Hambidge Center for the Arts, and fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Ragdale Foundation. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Best American Essays 2016, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, Kenyon Review, The Sun, Brevity, and The Los Angeles Review of Books, among other publications. She teaches at Kenyon College, where she is the 2016-18 Kenyon Review Fellow in prose. http://www.jaquiradiaz.com/
Padma Viswanathan
Padma Viswanathan's debut novel, The Toss of a Lemon, was published in eight countries, a bestseller in three, and a finalist for the Commonwealth (Regional) First Book Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Prize and the Pen Center USA Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, has been published in Canada, the USA, India and Australia. In Canada, it was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a national bestseller.
Viswanathan's short fiction appears in various journals; her story "Transitory Cities" won the 2006 Boston Review Short Story Contest. Her plays include House of Sacred Cows and Disco Does Not Suck. She has published cultural journalism and reviews in such venues as Elle Canada, The National Post, The Rumpus and Guernica. Her handwritten Letter-in-the-Mail for The Rumpus can be found in Best American Non-Required Reading 2012. She has also published several short translations of Brazilian fiction.
Viswanathan teaches fiction-writing and literature in the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas, in Fayetteville. She has served on juries for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Neustadt Prize, and others. http://padmaviswanathan.com/