Visiting Writers at Colby
Visiting Writers Series
Colby has been inviting emerging and nationally-recognized poets and writers to read on campus since it established the creative writing program in the 1970s. Some of the country’s most significant writers and poets have read and often visited Colby classes throughout the years, including Gwendolyn Brooks, John Irving, Raymond Carver, Lucille Clifton, James Tate, John Ashbury, and Toni Cade Bambara, to name a very few. More recently, Gerald Stern, Terrance Hayes, Jo Ann Beard, Claire Messud, Lorrie Moore, Ross Gay, Lan Samantha Chang, Laura Kasischke, Suzanne Berne, Dan Chaon, Don Lee, Jane Brox, Tom Perrotta, Vievee Francis, Chris Castellani, Steve Stern, Lily King, Elizabeth Strout, and Jerald Walker have read in the series.
Two Cent Talks Reading Series
In 2015 the Program initiated Two Cent Talks to celebrate the literary arts in Maine. Readings and receptions are held in the Greene Block + Studios downtown and pair a Maine fiction writer with a poet. Writers who have presented at Two Cent Talks include Carolyn Chute, Monica Wood, Stuart Kestenbaum, Jeffrey Thomson, Justin Tussing, Betsy Sholl, Arielle Greenberg, Kate Christensen, Mira Ptacin, Bill Roorbach, Kate Christensen, Phuc Tran, Julia Bouwsma, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, and Morgan Talty, among many others.
(Sponsored by the Office of the President, Center for the Arts and Humanities, and the English Department).