Mar 25 Wednesday
Susan Choi is the author of Flashlight, which has been nominated for the 2025 Booker Prize and National Book Award, and Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for fiction, as well as the novels The Foreign Student, American Woman, A Person of Interest, and My Education. She is a recipient of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction, the PEN/W. G. Sebald Award, a Lambda Literary award, the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She teaches in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Brooklyn, New York.
—The Writing Seminars hosts a wide array of writers across literary disciplines, including poets, novelists, translators, and biographers. Our regular reading series connects acclaimed writers from around the world with Baltimore communities at Johns Hopkins and beyond.
Our events are always free and open to the public, and include lively Q&A, catered receptions, books signings, and sales in partnership with Greedy Reads. If you would like to receive email announcements about our events, please contact [email protected].
Mar 31 Tuesday
At VLP, we honor lifelong learning and understand the importance of starting early and making it fun. We hope you join us for our return to in-person Tots Tuesday Storytime for toddlers & preschoolers!
Apr 01 Wednesday
Heather McHugh, recipient of a 2009 MacArthur fellowship, is the author of thirteen books of poetry, translation, and literary essays. Her prize-winning translations include a Griffin International Poetry Prize selection, and her books of original poetry have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. McHugh has taught literature and writing for over three decades, most regularly at the University of Washington in Seattle and in the low-residency MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College in Asheville. From 1999 to 2005 she served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, and in 2000 she was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2011 to 2018 she hosted respite getaways for full-time family caregivers.
Apr 07 Tuesday
Apr 08 Wednesday
Jonathan Franzen is the author of six novels, most recently Crossroads and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, including The Discomfort Zone, Farther Away, and The End of the End of the Earth. Among his honors are the National Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Award, the Heartland Prize, Die Welt Literature Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize, and the first Carlos Fuentes Medal awarded at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. Franzen is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Akademie der Künste, and the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. An ardent bird-watcher, he has served on the board of the American Bird Conservancy since 2008, and has received the EuroNatur Award for his work in bird conservation.
Presented by the President’s Reading Series: Literature of Social Import.
Apr 14 Tuesday
Apr 21 Tuesday
Apr 28 Tuesday
May 05 Tuesday
May 12 Tuesday