Sponsored by the School of Arts and Humanities, the Marcia Kinsey Visiting Writers Series brings award-winning writers to campus to read from their work, talk about their writing, and interact with our students.
Both the St. Edward's and the larger Austin community benefit from the novelists, poets, and playwrights who come to campus. These working artists inspire students and add dimension to professors' curriculum. For more information about the Marcia Kinsey Visiting Writers Series, please contact Associate Professor Sasha West or Associate Professor Mary Helen Specht.
Jennifer Chang
Thursday, September 25, 2025 at 6pm
Carter Auditorium (JBWS 186)
Jennifer Chang is the author of The History of Anonymity, Some Say the Lark, and An Authentic Life, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her other honors include the William Carlos Williams Award, the Levinson Prize from Poetry, and fellowships from the Elizabeth Murray Artists Residency, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She has published poems in the American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Yale Review, and elsewhere. She is the poetry editor of New England Review and teaches at the University of Texas in Austin.
Valeria Luiselli
Thursday, November 20, 2025 at 6pm
Carter Auditorium (JBWS 186)
Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in Costa Rica, South Korea, South Africa and India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she is the author of Sidewalks, Faces in the Crowd, The Story of My Teeth, and Tell Me How It Ends (An Essay in Forty Questions). Her most recent novel, Lost Children Archive was a New York Times 10 Best Books of 2019, won the Rathbone Folio Prize 2020, the Dublin Award 2021, the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was nominated for the Women鈥檚 Prize for Fiction, and the Booker Prize 2019 among others. Her work is published in more than thirty languages. She is a professor at Bard College and, in 2019, was awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant.
Lisa Olstein
Thursday, February 19, 2026 at 6pm
Carter Auditorium (JBWS 186)
Lisa Olstein is the author of six poetry collections: Radio Crackling, Radio Gone; Lost Alphabet; Little Stranger; Late Empire; Dream Apartment; and Distinguished Office of Echoes. Her nonfiction includes Pain Studies (Bellevue Literary Press/Dreamscape/Hanser) and Climate (Essay Press), an exchange of epistolary essays co-written with poet Julie Carr. Olstein is the lyricist for the rock band Cold Satellite, and in 2025 Lost Alphabet for voice, five musicians, and electronics, an adaptation of her poems by composer Januibe Tejera, premiered with Ensemble Phace (Vienna). Olstein鈥檚 honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Lannan Writing Residency, Hayden Carruth Award, Writers League of Texas Discovery Book Award, and Sustainable Arts Foundation Award. She is the Ellen Clayton Garwood Centennial Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
Nina McConigley
Wednesday, April 8, 2026 at 6pm
Carter Auditorium (JBWS 186)
Nina McConigley was born in Singapore and raised in Wyoming. Her short-story collection Cowboys and East Indians was the winner of the 2014 PEN Open Book Award and a High Plains Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Orion, O, Oprah Magazine, among others. She was a 2019 Walter Jackson Bate fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a 2022 recipient of the NEA Fellowship. The Denver Center for Performing Arts commissioned her play based on Cowboys and East Indians, which will have its world premiere in 2026. Her novel, How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder, and her new essay collection will be published in 2026. She teaches at Colorado State University.
Visiting Writers
Jason Schneiderman
Jason Schneiderman is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Self Portrait of Icaracus as a Country on Fire and Hold Me Tight. He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers, and his poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, and Tin House. His awards include the Emily Dickinson Award, the Shestack Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship. He is longtime co-host of the podcast Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile and a guest host for The Slowdown. He is Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Timothy Braun
Timothy Braun鈥檚 plays and operas have been performed across the United States, Europe, and Asia, including "Sherlock Holmes and The Internet of Things," at Lincoln Center. His play 鈥淭hree, or The Sound of The Great Existential Nothingness鈥 was the winner of the David Mark Cohen New Play Award. His essays have been published by The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Texas Standard, Austin Monthly, American Theatre Magazine, among others. He has been a awarded numerous residencies, including by the MacDowell, Djerassi, Santa Fe Art Institute, Edward Albee Foundation, Ucross, and Blue Mountain Center. Other honors include a National Science Foundation Innovation Grant and a Sawtelle Innovation Award. He teaches playwriting at St. Edward's University.
Alejandro Puyana
Alejandro Puyana, who came to the United States from Venezuela at the age of twenty-six, received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His recently released debut novel Freedom is a Feast has already won the Westport Prize for Literature. Puyana鈥檚 work has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, The American Scholar, and elsewhere, and his story 鈥淗ands of Dirty Children鈥 was reprinted in Best American Short Stories. He lives with his wife and daughter in Austin, Texas.
Elisa Gonzalez
Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, essayist, and fiction writer. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. A graduate of Yale University and the New York University MFA program, she has received fellowships from the Norman Mailer Center, Bread Loaf Writers鈥 Conference, Rolex Foundation, and U.S. Fulbright Program. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers鈥 Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Whiting Award. Her debut poetry collection, Grand Tour was named one of the best books of 2023 by The New Yorker. FSG will also bring out her novel, The Awakenings, and a nonfiction book, Strangers on Earth.
Previous Visiting Writers Series speakers include:
- Kazim Ali
- Eula Biss
- Jericho Brown
- Oscar Caseres
- Cyrus Cassells
- Ana Castillo
- Denise Chavez
- Lucille Clifton
- Natalie Diaz
- Steven Dietz
- Doug Dorst
- Jennifer duBois
- Nathan Englander
- Tarfia Faizullah
- David Wright Falad茅
- Carrie Fountain
- Ben Fountain
- Jonathan Safran Foer
- Raul Garza
- Jorie Graham
- Virginia Grise
- Joy Harjo
- Terrance Hayes
- Marie Howe
- Amanda Johnston
- A Van Jordan
- Phillip Levine
- Ada Lim贸n
- Karan Mahajan
- Sarah Manguso
- Elizabeth McCracken
- Erika Meitner
- Dinaw Mengestu
- Debra Monroe
- Dinty Moore
- Tom谩s Q. Mor铆n
- Naomi Shihab Nye
- 贰尘颈濒测&苍产蝉辫;笔茅谤别锄
- Emmy P茅rez
- Roger Reeves
- Antonio Ruiz-Camacho
- Karen Russell
- Jaymes Sanchez
- Chaitali Sen
- Diane Seuss
- ire'ne lara silva
- Gary Soto
- Natalia Sylvester
- Justin Torres
- Deb Olin Unferth
- Jean Valentine
- Jes煤s I. Valles
- Derek Walcott
- Sasha West
- Monica Wood
- Tiphanie Yanique
- Dean Young
- Jenny Tinghui Zhang