Muhlenberg Presents 2025 Living Writers Series
Muhlenberg’s robust Living Writers Series is a unique component of the college’s Creative Writing program.Wednesday, September 17, 2025 03:51 PM
Muhlenberg “produces successful, high-earning and influential graduates from all economic backgrounds, with less student debt.” — Forbes
Muhlenberg College will host five internationally recognized authors this fall as part of its 2025 Living Writers Series. Muhlenberg is one of a handful of colleges offering a semester-long Living Writers course and reading series. Students enrolled in the course read recent works from the selected authors and then interact with the writers directly as they visit campus for a day.
Writers attend classes, have lunch with Creative Writing students, and then give a public reading of their work in the evening — followed by a question and answer session and book signing. All public Living Writer Series events are held in Moyer Hall, Miller Forum at 7 p.m. (Books will be available for purchase.)
Sept. 18: Lorrie Moore — “Collected Stories”
Oct. 9: Safiya Sinclair — “How To Say Babylon”
Oct. 23: Safia Elhillo — “Girls That Never Die”
Nov. 6: Roger Reeves — “Best Barbarian”
Nov. 20: Branden Jacobs-Jenkins — “Everybody”
Lorrie Moore is the award-winning author of the short story collections ”Self-Help,” “Like Life, Birds of America,” and ”Bark;” the novels ”Anagrams, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?,” ”A Gate at the Stairs,” and “I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home;” as well as the children’s novel “The Forgotten Helper.” Her reviews and essays have appeared in such publications as The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, The Yale Review, and The Atlantic. “See What Can Be Done” (2018) is a collection of her reviews and essays. With more than 30 years of teaching experience, Moore is currently the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt professor of English at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.
Born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Safiya Sinclair is the internationally bestselling author of the memoir “How to Say Babylon.” Named one of President Barack Obama’s favorites, the award-winning book was included on over 17 Best Book lists for 2023, including the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of the year, the Washington Post Top 10 Books, TIME Magazine’s Top 10 Nonfiction Books, and The Atlantic’s 10 Best Books. Sinclair is currently a professor of creative writing at Arizona State University.
Sudanese by way of Washington, D.C., Safia Elhillo is a prize-winning poet and author of ”The January Children,” ”Girls That Never Die,” ”Home Is Not A Country,” and ”Bright Red Fruit.” Elhillo’s work appears in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others, and in anthologies including ”The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop” and ”The Penguin Book of Migration Literature.” Her work has been translated into several languages, and commissioned by Under Armour, Cuyana, and the Bavarian State Ballet.
Roger Reeves is the author three award-winning collections: ”Dark Days: Fugitive Essays,” ”Best Barbarian,” and”King Me.” His poems have appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, and Tin House. Among other awards, he is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard University, a Whiting Award, an NEA Fellowship, and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He is currently a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. Recent theatre credits include “Purpose,” “Appropriate,” “The Comeuppance,” “Girls,” “Everybody,” “War,” “Gloria,” “An Octoroon,” and “Neighbors.” He currently teaches at Yale University and serves as vice president of the Dramatists Guild council and on the boards of Soho Rep, Park Avenue Armory, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, and the Dramatists Guild Foundation. Honors include a USA Artists fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship, the MacArthur fellowship, the Windham-Campbell Prize for Drama, and the inaugural Tennessee Williams Award.
