Author Matthew Salesses will offer a reading as part of this year’s Mary E. Rolling Reading Series. The reading, which is free and open to the public, will take place at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, February  22, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium on the University Park campus. 

During his visit, Salesses will also participate in a panel discussion on “The Antiracist Classroom.” This event will be held on Wednesday February 21, 2024, 4:00 p.m, in the Grucci Room, 102 Burrowes Building, and is open to faculty across literature and writing disciplines.  

Matthew Salesses is a novelist, scholar, and Korean adoptee who has written and spoken widely about adoption, race, and parenting. He is the award-winning author of eight books, most recently a novel, “The Sense of Wonder” (2023) and a fiction writing guidebook, “Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping” (2021). Forthcoming is a memoir, “To Grieve Is to Carry Another Time.” In 2015 Buzzfeed named him one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers. Salesses is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University.    

Salesses’ latest novel, “The Sense of Wonder,” was named on many “best of” lists, including The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023. Ron Charles of The Washington Post characterizes the novel this way: “What Salesses does here is a remarkable feat of artistic prowess that somehow blends the themes of K-drama with the spectacle of sports drama in a way that resets our frame of reference for the Korean American experience. Indeed, it’s a move that doesn’t seem entirely possible until you see the jump yourself.”  

“The Antiracist Classroom” panel discussion on February 21, sponsored by the English Department’s Antiracism and Equity Committee, along with the Global Asias Initiative, will focus on creating just and equitable classroom environments through syllabus and course design, whether in the creative writing workshop or the literature or rhetoric classroom. The discussion will draw on insights from Salesses’ recent book “Craft in the Real World,” which challenges those teaching creative writing to look at traditional writing workshop practices with a fresh eye and an antiracist lens. As Book Page noted in its review, “The world has changed, and the writing workshop must catch up.”   

In addition to Matthew Salesses, the panel will feature William Germano and Kit Nicholls (coauthors of “Syllabus: The Remarkable, Unremarkable Document That Changes Everything”). William Germano is professor of English at Cooper Union. His books include “Getting It Published” and “From Dissertation to Book.” Kit Nicholls is director of the Center for Writing at Cooper Union, where he teaches writing, literature, and cultural studies. Panelists will be in conversation with each other and with attendees.  

The Mary E. Rolling Reading Series is a program offered by Penn State’s Creative Writing Program in English. The series receives support from the College of the Liberal Arts; the Department of English; the Joseph L. Grucci Poetry Endowment; the Mary E. Rolling Lectureship in Creative Writing; and University Libraries.

Julianna Baggott will give a free public reading on Thursday, January 25, 6 pm, in Paterno Library’s Foster Auditorium.

Baggott has published over twenty books, some pseudonymously, including “Pure” and “Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders,” both New York Times Notable Books of the Year. She heads the production company Mildred’s Moving Picture Show; her projects are in development at Disney+, Netflix, MGM, Paramount, Universal, and elsewhere.

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