George Mason University’s Creative Writing Program joins Watershed Lit and Mason’s University Libraries in presenting the Spring 2026 Visiting Writers Series.
Writers will meet for afternoon workshops with students from Mason’s MFA program in creative writing and will then offer evening readings and conversations open to the public and hosted by Mason’s creative writing community.
All readings/conversations will be in the Fenwick Library Reading Room, Room #2001, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Please note that Laura Sims’ event will take place on a Wednesday night instead of the usual Thursday evening.
Visit creativewriting.gmu.edu for updated information.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 12: GABRIELLE CALVOCORESSI (POETRY)
Rescheduled from Fall
Gabrielle Calvocoressi is the author of The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, Apocalyptic Swing (a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize), and Rocket Fantastic, winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Their most recent collection of poetry, The New Economy, released in 2025, was named a finalist for the National Book Award. Calvocoressi is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship from Stanford University; a Rona Jaffe Woman Writer's Award; a Lannan Foundation residency in Marfa, TX; the Bernard F. Conners Prize from The Paris Review; and a residency from the Civitella di Ranieri Foundation, among others. Calvocoressi's poems have been published or are forthcoming in numerous magazines and journals including The Baffler, The New York Times, POETRY, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and The New Yorker. Calvocoressi is an Editor at Large at Los Angeles Review of Books, and Poetry Editor at Southern Cultures. Works in progress include a non-fiction book entitled The Year I Didn't Kill Myself and a novel, The Alderman of the Graveyard. Calvocoressi was the Beatrice Shepherd Blane Fellow at the Harvard-Radcliffe Institute for 2022 - 2023. Calvocoressi teaches at UNC Chapel Hill and lives in Old East Durham, NC, where joy, compassion, and social justice are at the center of their personal and poetic practice.
THURSDAY, MARCH 26: MATTHEW DAVIS (NONFICTION)
Matthew Davis is the author of Biography of a Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore. His previous books are When Things Get Dark: A Mongolian Winter’s Tale, and the children’s book The Magic Horse Fiddle. His essays and journalism have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Guernica, among other places. He’s been an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at New America, a Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, and a Fulbright Fellow to Syria and Jordan. He holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa and an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He founded the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center at George Mason University in 2016 and was its founding director from 2016-2023. You can find him at his website: matthewdaviswriter.com
THURSDAY, APRIL 9: JEANNIE VANASCO (NONFICTION)
Jeannie Vanasco is the author most recently of A Silent Treatment. Her other memoirs include Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—a New York Times Editors' Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22: LAURA SIMS (FICTION)
Laura Sims is the author of How Can I Help You, a New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Book Riot, and CrimeReads Best Book of the Year; a LibraryReads Top Ten Pick of July; and an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense. Sims’s first novel, Looker, was included on “Best Books” lists in Vogue, People Magazine, Real Simple, Entertainment Weekly, and more, and is now in development for television by eOne and Emily Mortimer’s King Bee Productions. Her forthcoming book, The Man, will be published in Summer 2026. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four poetry collections; her essays and poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, Lit Hub, and Electric Lit. She and her family live in New Jersey, where she works part-time as a reference librarian and hosts the library’s lecture series.
THURSDAY, APRIL 23: SOHAM PATEL & PRAGEETA SHARMA (POETRY)
Soham Patel is the author of all one in the end/water— (Delete Press, 2022), ever really hear it (Subito Press, 2018), winner of the Subito Prize, and to afar from afar (The Accomplices, 2018). They live in Blacksburg, Virginia where they run the graduate publishing certificate on the MFA faculty at Virginia Tech, teaching courses on literary magazines, small presses, and digital publications.
Prageeta Sharma is the author of six collections of poetry; her most recent collection is Onement Won. She is the founder of the conference Thinking Its Presence: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Race, Creative Writing, and Artistic and Aesthetic Practices, a recent recipient of the 2025 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, and is currently the Henry G. Lee ’37 professor of English at Pomona College.
October 23, 2025