Reading Series
Our Reading Series presents free literary readings and discussions that are open to the public.
Upcoming Events
There are no upcoming events at this time.
Lewis Busbee
Thursday, 28 August 2025, 7:45pm, Fromm Hall 120 - Xavier Auditorium
Lewis Busbee ’s most recent novel is Diver. He is also the author of The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, Blackboard, After the Gold Rush, Fliegelman’s Desire, as well as three award-winning books for younger readers, Steinbeck’s Ghost, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, and Bridge of Time. His essays, poems, stories, and interviews have appeared in Lit Hub, Lit Stack, GQ, The New York Times Book Review, Paris Review, ZYZZYVA, Black Warrior Review, Rattle, Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. A former bookseller and publisher, he’s taught in the MFA program since 2000.
Laleh Khadivi
Thursday, 28 August 2025, 7:45pm, Fromm Hall 120 - Xavier Auditorium
Laleh Khadivi is the author of three novels. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a NEA fellowship, a Whiting Award, the Stanford Stein Fellowship and the Barnes and Noble Discover New Writer Award, among others. Her fourth book, Female Life on Planet Earth, will be out Fall 2026 with Ecco/HarperCollins.
Mimi Lok
Thursday, 28 August 2025, 7:45pm, Fromm Hall 120 - Xavier Auditorium
Mimi Lok is a British-Chinese author, editor, and educator. She is the recipient of a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, A PEN America Award, and a California Book Award for Fiction. She is also the founder of Voice of Witness, an award-winning human rights and oral history nonprofit organization focused on amplifying marginalized voices through a book series and a national education program. Her debut short story collection, Last of Her Name (Kaya Press, 2019) received the 2020 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and a California Book Award silver medal for first fiction, and was a finalist for The California Independent Bookseller Alliance ‘Golden Poppy’ Book Awards in 2020 as well as the CLMP Firecracker Award. The novella from the collection, "The Woman in the Closet," was a finalist for the 2020 National Magazine Award.
Dave Madden
Thursday, 28 August 2025, 7:45pm, Fromm Hall 120 - Xavier Auditorium
Dave Madden is the author of a nonfiction book, The Authentic Animal: Inside the Odd and Obsessive World of Taxidermy, and the story collection If You Need Me I'll Be Over There. His essays have appeared in Defector, the Guardian, Lit Hub, Harper's, Creative Nonfiction, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere, and he's the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. He's been teaching nonfiction at USF since 2013 and is currently revising a memoir on queer sex and shame.
Tomas Moniz
Thursday, 28 August 2025, 7:45pm, Fromm Hall 120 - Xavier Auditorium
Tomas Moniz is a latinx writer living in East Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway and the Lambda Literary Award. His second novel, All Friends Are Necessary, won the California Golden Poppy Award. He edited the popular Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies. He teaches at Berkeley City College, the Antioch MFA program and USF. He has stuff on the internet but loves penpals: PO Box 3555, Berkeley CA 94703. He promises to write back.
D. A. Powell
Thursday, 28 August 2025, 7:45pm, Fromm Hall 120 - Xavier Auditorium
D. A. Powell’s most recent collections are “Low Hanging Fruit,” (Foundlings Press, 2022) and “Atlas T” (Rescue Press, 2020). He’s the author of 5 books, 3 chapbooks and co-author of a collaborative experimental memoir. Over the years he has served as poetry editor for Electronic Poetry Review, Lo-Ball and Mumber Magazine; he’s co-edited an essay collection on poet Dunstan Thompson and was one of the many editors who contributed to the Graywolf anthology New European Poets. In 2011 he was the judge for the Best New Poets anthology. His honors include a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, the John Updike Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a California Book Award and being named both the Wallace Stevens Poet in Hartford Connecticut and the Allen Ginsberg Poet in Residence at Naropa Institute in Boulder in 2020, a year in which he sadly could do neither.
K.M. Soehnlein
Thursday, 28 August 2025, 7:45pm, Fromm Hall 120 - Xavier Auditorium
K.M. Soehnlein, aka Karl, is a long-time member of the fiction faculty in the MFA in Writing Program. In 2024, he was honored with the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize from Lambda Literary. His published novels are: Army of Lovers, recognized by the Independent Publisher Book Awards for the best LGBTQ Fiction 0f 2022; The World of Normal Boys, winner of the Lambda Award for Gay Fiction; You Can Say You Knew Me When; and Robin and Ruby. He’s published short fiction, personal essays and journalism, and also writes for TV and film.
Preeti Vangani
Thursday, 28 August 2025, 7:45pm, Fromm Hall 120 - Xavier Auditorium
Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet & writer based in San Francisco. She is the author of the poetry collections Mother Tongue Apologize (2019) and Fifty Mothers, forthcoming from River River Books (Feb 2026). Her work has been published in Georgia Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner and many other places. She earned an MFA in Writing from University of San Francisco and teaches in the program.
The Emerging Writers Festival
Co-sponsored by the English department and MFA program, the Emerging Writers Festival features two days of readings by five up-and-coming writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. On the second day of the festival, the authors hold a panel discussion on their experiences navigating life as a writer and the complexities of the publishing industry.
