Contemporary Writers Series

The Contemporary Writers Series brings nationally and internationally known writers to our campus to share their work and to discuss their art with Canisius students in an informal setting. Past guests to Canisius include Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award winners, McArthur "genius" grant winners, and a Nobel Laureate: Richard Russo, George Saunders, Edwidge Danticat, Sharon Olds, Ann Patchett, Junot Diaz, Paul Muldoon, Tracy Kidder, Tracy K. Smith, Alice McDermott, and Seamus Heaney, among others.

Founded with a grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation and continued through the Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professorship Program, the writer series is generously supported today by the Hassett, Scoma, and Lowery Endowments; The National Endowment for the Arts; and with the cooperation of The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, Just Buffalo Literary Center, The Center for Urban Education, and Talking Leaves Books.

Upcoming Events

philip metres canisius

Philip Metres

When: Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Where: Grupp Fireside Lounge

  • Limited seating, first come, first served: doors open at 6:30 PM.

  • Q and A session and reception will follow the reading.

To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane, @email: he will email you a link. 

Philip Metres was born in San Diego and grew up outside of Chicago. He graduated from College of Holy Cross and earned an MFA and PhD from Indiana University. He is the author of twelve books, including Sand Opera, Shrapnel Maps, Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance, and his most recent, Fugitive/Refuge. Among his awards and honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannon Literary Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and three Arab American Book Awards. Currently he lives with his family in Cleveland, where he is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University.

Web Resources:


 

vincent oneill canisius speaker

Past Events

19th Annual Hassett Reading: Vincent O'Neill

When: Tuesday, November 14, 2023 7 PM
Where: Montante Cultural Center

  • Limited seating, first come, first served: doors open at 6:30 PM.
  • Q and A session and reception will follow the reading.

To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane, @email: he will email you a link. 

Vincent O’Neill trained at the Abbey Theatre School of Acting and later studied with Marcel Marceau for several years in Paris. In the 1980s he served on the drama faculty at Trinity College, Dublin, and was a member of the Abbey Theatre Company, both as an actor and director. In 1989, he co-founded the Irish Classical Theatre Company in Buffalo and served as its Artistic Director for 30 years. He's won Artie Awards as Best Actor, Outstanding Director, and Outstanding Playwright, and also the Career Achievement Award. He was named Irishman of the Year by the Buffalo News, and later, Citizen of the Year. In 2022 he was honored with a permanent star in the Walk of Fame in Buffalo’s Theatre District.

Web Resources:

 

clint smith canisius

Clint Smith

When: Tuesday, October 17, 2023
Where: Montante Cultural Center

  • Limited seating, first come, first served: doors open at 6:30 PM.
  • Q and A session and reception will follow the reading.
  • To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane, @email: he will email you a link. 

Clint Smith was born and raised in New Orleans and earned a B.A. in English from Davidson College and Ph.D. in education from Harvard. He is the author of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America, a #1 New York Times bestseller and a 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award winner for nonfiction, and two poetry collections: Counting Descent and Above Ground. His essays, poems, and scholarly writing have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. Currently he is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Web Resources:

joy harjo canisius

Joy Harjo

When: Tuesday, April 18, 2023
Where: Montante Cultural Center
Limited seating, first come, first served: doors open at 6:30 PM.

Q and A session and reception will follow the reading.

To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane, @email: he will email you a link. 

Joy Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry, several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs. Her honors include the Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, she served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laurate of the United States. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is the first artist-in-residence at the Bob Dylan Center.

Web Resources

Marina carr canisius

18th Annual Hassett Reading- Marina Carr

When: Thursday, October 6, 7 PM
Where: Montante Cultural Center
Limited seating, first come, first served: doors open at 6:30 PM

Q and A session and reception will follow the reading.

To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane, @email: he will email you a link. 

Marina Carr grew up in County Offaly and graduated from University College Dublin with a degree in English and philosophy. Her plays include The Cordelia Dream, Phaedra Backwards, On Raftery's Hill, Portia Coughlan, By the Bog of Cats, The Mai, and Girl On An Altar. She’s received The Irish Times Playwright Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, the E.M. Forster Prize, the Macaulay Fellowship, The Hennessy Award, and the Windham-Campbell Prize. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Dublin City University. 

Web Resources

Gregory Boyle 

gregory boyle speaking at canisius college

When: Thursday, October 20, 7 PM
Where: Montante Cultural Center
Limited seating, first come, first served: doors open at 6:30 PM.

Q and A session and reception will follow the reading.

To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane, @email: he will email you a link. 

Greg Boyle an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world. He was born in Los Angeles, one of eight children, and earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and English from Gonzaga University and graduate degrees from Loyola Marymount University, the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, MA, and the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, CA. Father Greg is the author of three beloved and bestselling books: Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, and The Whole Language. In 2014 he was named by the White House a Champion of Change, and in 2017 received the Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. 

Web Resources

Hanif Abdurraqib 

hanif abdurraqib at canisius

When: Tuesday, April 26, 7 PM
Where: Montante Cultural Center
Q&A session and reception will follow the reading

Limited seating, first come, first served: doors open at 6:30 PM

To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane, @email: he will email you a link. 

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of two poetry collections: The Crown Ain't Worth Much, a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and A Fortune For Your Disaster, winner of the 2020 Lenore Marshall Prize. His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune. His most recent book is A Little Devil In America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance, a National Book Award Finalist. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow. 


Web Resources
Readings

Mary Karr 

Karr
When: Tuesday, October 5, 7 PM
Where: Montante Cultural Center
 
Event Information
  • Q and A session and reception will follow the reading
  • All in-person guests must wear masks
  • Limit seating, first come, first served: doors open at 6:30 PM

To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane, @email: he will email you a link. 

Mary Karr was born and raised in East Texas and attended Macalester College and Goddard College. She is the author of three award-winning, bestselling memoirs—The Liars’ Club, Cherry, and Lit—The Art of Memoir, and five volumes of poetry, most recently, Tropic of Squalor. She is a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, winner of a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Radcliffe Bunting Fellowship, and an NEA grant. Karr is currently the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University and commutes there from New York City, where she is grandmother to a pit bull. 

Web Resources 

Yeats Now: An evening of poetry, song, and conversation, featuring Joseph Hassett, Vincent O’Neill, and Mary Ramsey, with special guest, Daniel Mulhall, Ireland’s Ambassador to the United States.

When: Tuesday, April 27, 7 pm.

Where:

  • Live Hybrid Event: Montante Cultural Center
  • Limited In-Person Seating for Canisius Community
  • Live Webcast
Joe Hassett

A Buffalo native, Joe Hassett majored in English at Canisius University, from which he graduated in 1964. His parents were both educated in Buffalo, his father (Paul Hassett, Sr.) at Canisius and his mother (Dorothy Meegan) at D’Youville College. Joe is a graduate of Harvard Law School, holds a Ph.D. in Anglo-Irish Literature from University College Dublin, and was a visiting scholar at St. John’s College, Oxford. As a lawyer in Washington, D.C., with the global firm Hogan Lovells, he has litigated cases involving important questions of public and private law in courts throughout the country and in the United States Supreme Court. He is honored to be outside counsel to the Embassy of Ireland in Washington. His conversation at Canisius with Chief Justice John Roberts appeared on C-Span television. He is the author of W.B. Yeats and the Muses (Oxford University Press, 2010), The Ulysses Trials: Beauty and Truth Meet the Law (Lilliput Press, 2016), and Yeats Now: Echoing into Life (Lilliput, 2020). Joe traces his love of literature to inspirational Canisius professors like Charles Brady, Dick Thompson, Les Warren, and Mel Schroeder. He caught the Yeats bug while attending the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo as the Canisius designee of a scholarship organized by generous Buffalonians.

Yeats Now: Echoing Into Life is available from bookdepository.com.

Vincent Oneill

Vincent O’Neill was born in Dublin and trained as an actor at the Abbey Theatre School of Acting. As a member of the Abbey Theatre Company in the 1980s, he toured widely, from London and the Edinburgh Theatre Festival to the Bolshoi Theatre in Leningrad and the Moscow Arts Theatre. Since relocating to Western New York in 1989, Vincent has worked both as actor and director in all of the region’s major theatres, and has won numerous awards for acting, directing, and playwriting, including Artie Awards in the categories of Outstanding Actor; Outstanding Director; Outstanding Playwright; and Career Achievement. He’s performed his critically acclaimed one-man show Joyicity throughout Europe and the U.S., with two runs off-Broadway, as well in Toronto, Sydney, and Tokyo. He is former chair and current director of theatre performance in the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University at Buffalo. The Buffalo News has named Irishman of the Year and Citizen of the Year. Since 1990, Vincent has served as artistic director of Buffalo’s celebrated Irish Classical Theatre Company. 

Mary Ramsey

Mary Ramsey was born in Washington, D.C., and started playing violin at age 5 while also singing in school and church productions. She received her bachelor of music in performance on viola at the State University of New York at Fredonia while also becoming a fulltime member of the Erie Philharmonic at age 17. Mary went on to form the critically acclaimed folk duo John & Mary with John Lombardo in Buffalo, recording four albums of original compositions. In 1995, she became the lead singer-songwriter for 10,000 Maniacs, scoring a top-40 hit with the song "More Than This." Mary and the band continue to tour the U.S. and abroad. They have played USO shows for troops in the Middle East and around the world, performed at the Inaugural Ball for President Clinton, and have been featured on television shows in the U.S. and Brazil. Mary has worked with Buffalo's Irish Classical Theatre, and has been a guest artist on many recordings, including those of The Goo Goo Dolls, Ani DiFranco, and Billy Bragg. Mary is grateful to her family and friends who have supported her following of the muses throughout her life.

Daniel Mulhall

Daniel Mulhall was born and raised in Waterford, Ireland, and did his undergraduate and post-graduate studies at University College Cork, where he specialized in modern Irish history. He became Ireland's 18th Ambassador to the United States in August 2017. Ambassador Mulhall maintains a keen interest in Irish history and literature. He is the author of A New Day Dawning: A Portrait of Ireland in 1900 and co-editor of The Shaping of Modern Ireland: A Centenary Assessment. He has spoken at the Oxford Literary Festival, the Newbury Festival, the Liverpool Literary Festival, and the Edinburgh International Book Festival. He has been a regular speaker at the University of Liverpool Institute of Irish Studies and is an Honorary Fellow at the Institute. Beginning in 2015, the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Butler Yeats, Ambassador Mulhall posts a poem every day on Twitter. You can follow him @DanMulhall

Register Now for Live Webcast

Web Resources

Fall 2020

Damon Young
Damon Young

Damon Young grew up in Pittsburgh, attended Canisius University on a basketball scholarship, and earned a bachelor’s degree with a major in English. He is a co-founder and the editor-in-chief of Very Smart Brothas and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times. His debut memoir, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir In Essays (Ecco/HarperCollins), won the Barnes & Noble’s 2019 Discover Award and was named by NPR one of the best books of the year. It was longlisted for the PEN America Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, nominated for an NAACP Image Award, and is a Krause Essay Prize nominee. His work has appeared in GQ, Time Magazine, The Washington Post, LitHub, Slate, The Guardian, NY Mag, and Ebony. Damon currently resides in Pittsburgh’s Northside, with his wife and two children.

Web Resources

 

Abdi Nor Iftin 
Abdi Nor Iftin canisius
Photo Credit: Michael Lionstar

Thursday, October 24
Montante Cultural Center 7 pm

As a child in worn-torn Mogadishu, Abdi Nor Iftin leaned English by watching American action movies. His love of American culture—film, hip-hop music, and fashion—was so great, he became known as “Abdi American.” His dispatches from Somalia were featured on the BBC’s World Service and NPR’s This American Life. As life in Somalia grew more dangerous, he fled to Kenya, and eventually won entrance to the United States through the Diversity Visa Lottery. His memoir, Call Me American, earned starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist, and was name an ALA Notable Book of the Year. He currently lives in Portland, Maine, where he attends the University of Southern Maine, works as an interpreter for Somali immigrants, and plays soccer every Saturday in a melting-pot league of Americans and immigrants from around the world. 

Web Resources:

Michael Longley

Michael Longley Canisius University

16th Annual Hassett Reading
Thursday, March 14
Montante Cultural Center | 7 pm

Michael Longley was born in Belfast, educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institute, and studied Classics at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of ten collections of poetry, most recently Angel Hill, and has been awarded the Whitbread Poetry Award, the Hawthornden Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Irish Times Poetry Prize. He served as Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007 to 2010, and was honored with the title of Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2010.

Web Resources
Learn more about Michale Longley at the links below: 

Poetry Foundation Biography and Bibliography
“The Vitality of Ordinary Things”: Interview with Krista Tippett
Creative Minds at Birmingham Reading 
Review of Angel Hill
Letter to a Young Poet, BBC 

Lynda Barry 

Lynda Barry canisius university

Thursday, April 11
Montante Cultural Center | 7 pm 

Lynda Barry was born in Wisconsin, grew up in Seattle, and earned a degree in fine arts from Evergreen State College. She is a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, teacher, and the author of 21 books, including The Good Times Are Killing Me, Cruddy, One! Hundred Demons!, and What It Is. She has received two William Eisner awards, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, the Wisconsin Library Association’s RR Donnelly Award, the Washington State Governor’s Award, the Holtz Center for Science & Technology Outreach Fellowship, and the 2017 Milton Caniff Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Cartoonists Society. Currently she is Associate Professor in Interdisciplinary Creativity, Director of the Image Lab at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, and the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

WEB RESOURCES

“Lynda Barry Will Make You Believe in Yourself,” New York Times Magazine 
The Longing To Make Something: Wisconsin Public Television Interview
Lawrence University Convocation Address
Lynda Barry on Comics, Creativity and Matt Groening 
One! Hundred! Demons! Publishers Weekly Review

Bao Phi

Thursday, April 12, 2018
7pm, Montante Cultural Center

Bao Phi was born in Vietnam, grew up in Minneapolis, and graduated from Macalester College with a degree in English. He is a poet, spoken-word artist, and community activist. a two-time Minnesota Grand Slam champion and a National Poetry Slam finalist, and his work has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Best American Poetry, selected by Billy Collins. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Sông I Sing and Thousand Star Hotel and a children’s book, A Different Pond. He is Program Director at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where he coordinates a number of programs, including the Equilibrium series, which was awarded an Anti-Racism Initiative award.

Web Resources:

Bao Phi's Homepage
NPR Code Switch Interview
Interview: On Writing, Racism, and Minneapolis
New York Times Review of Thousand Star Hotel
Bao Phi Performs "You Bring Out the Vietnamese in Me"

Colson Whitehead

Tuesday, March 20, 2018
7 pm, Montante Cultural Center

Colson Whitehead is The New York Times bestselling author of The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and The Colossus of New York. His most recent novel, The Underground Railroad, was winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award, American Bookseller’s Association Adult Fiction Book of the Year, and an Oprah Book Club selection.  

Web Resources:

Colson Whitehead's Homepage
Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review of The Underground Railroad
Why We Need Stories About Slavery: In Conversation with Oprah about The Underground Railroad
Colson Whitehead's National Book Award Acceptance Speech
Colson Whitehead's Rules for Writing


Fall 2017

Belinda McKeon

Thursday, October 26
7 pm, Montante Cultural Center
15th Annual Hassett Reading

Belinda McKeon attended Trinity College, Dublin and University College Dublin and earned an MFA from Columbia University. Her first novel, Solace, won the 2012 Faber Prize and was voted Irish Book of the Year. Her second novel, Tender, was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2015. Her essays and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Guardian, A Public Space and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Rutgers University.

Web Resources

Belinda McKeon's Homepage
In Conversation with Colm Tóibín
New York Times Review of Tender
In Conversation with Gabriel Byrne
Electric Lit Interview


Spring 2017

Diana Goetsch

Wednesday, March 29, 2017
7 pm, Grupp Fireside Lounge

Diana Goetsch was born in Brooklyn, grew up in North Point, Long Island, and earned degrees from Wesleyan University and New York University. She is the author (as Douglas Goetsch) of Nameless Boy, The Job of Being Everybody, and several other volumes of poems. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The American Scholar, Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize and numerous other journals and anthologies. Among her honors are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Donald Murray Prize. She's taught English and creative writing in New York City public schools and to incarcerated teens in the Bronx. She is the founder of Jane Street Press. Currently Goetsch writes a column entitled "Life in Transition" for The American Scholar, lives in New York, and works as a freelance teacher of writing.

Web Resources

Diana Goetsch's Homepage
The American Scholar "Between People"
fayobserver "Diana Goetsch: Moving beyond 'tolerance'"
Vermont Studio Center "Resident Profile: Diana Goetsch"
Cuppa Pulp & CILK119 Interview "No Such Thing as a Nice Little Old Lady"


Fall 2016

Emma Donoghue

Tuesday, October 4, 2016
7 pm, Montante Cultural Center
14th Annual Hassett Reading

Emma Donoghue was born in Dublin. She earned an undergraduate degree from University College Dublin and a Ph.D. in 18th-century literature from Cambridge. She has written for the screen, stage, and radio, as well as writing historical and contemporary novels and short stories. Her novel Room was an international bestseller, published in 39 countries, a New York Times Best Book of 2010, and a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes. Her film adaptation won Best First Screenplay at the Independent Spirit Awards and an Oscar Nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Her most recent book is The Wonder, to be published in September by Little Brown. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner, son, and daughter.

Web Resources

Emma Donoghue's Homepage
Excerpt from The Wonder
Emma Donoghue reads from "A Short Story"
Stylist Interview
"Emma Donoghue: The How I Write Interview"


Spring 2016

Cristina Henríquez

Thursday, March 3, 2016
7 pm, Grupp Fireside Lounge

Cristina Henríquez earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She is the author of a story collection, Come Together, Fall Apart, and two novels: The World in Half and The Book of Unknown Americans, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, an NPR Great Read, and named one of the best books of the year by Oprah.com and School Library Journal.

Web Resources

Cristina Henríquez's Homepage
The Rumpus Interview
"How I Became a Writer": New Yorker Essay
Miami Book Fair Interview
Michiko Kakutani's New York Times Review of The Book of Unknown Americans
The Dinner Party Download: A Reading From The Book of Unknown Americans


Anne Enright

Thursday, April 7, 2016
7 pm, Montante Cultural Center
13th Annual Hassett Reading

Anne Enright was born in Dublin. She is the author of a memoir of motherhood, three short story collections, and six novels, most recently The Green Road. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction, and her novel The Gathering won the 2007 Man Booker Prize. In January 2015, she was named the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction.

Web Resources

Wikipedia Biography
James Woods's Review of The Green Road, The New Yorker
"The Unknowability Of One Human Being To Another Is An Endless Subject For Novelists,": The Believer Interview
Ten Rules for Writing
"Anne Enright on The Green Road, Short Stories and What Men Ask her at Dinner Parties": Video Interview


Fall 2015

Theo Dorgan

Thursday, October 29, 2015
7 pm, Montante Cultural Center
12th Annual Hassett Reading  

Theo Dorgan was born in Cork and completed a BA in English and Philosophy and an MA in English at University College Cork. He is the author of two works of nonfiction, Sailing for Home: A Voyage from Antigua to Ireland and Time on the Ocean: A Voyage from Cape Horn to Cape Town; a novel, Making Way; and several collections of poetry, most recently, Nine Bright Shiners, named 2015 winner of the Irish Times-Poetry Now award. He is a former director of Poetry Ireland and a member of Aosdána, Ireland's academy of the arts.

Web Resources

Theo Dorgan's Homepage
Theo Dorgan reads selections from Nine Bright Shiners
Philip Coleman in Dublin Review of Nine Bright Shiners
"This Much I Know": Essay
A Climate Change Poem for Today: "The Question" by Theo Dorgan


Kevin Kling

Thursday, November 19, 2015
7 pm, Montante Cultural Center

Kevin Kling was born in Osseo, Minnesota, and graduated from Gustavas Adolphus College. He is a playwright, storyteller, regular contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered, and the author of two story collections. He performs his stories across the county and around the world, works with theaters including The Guthrie and the Interact Ensemble of Artists with Disabilities, and plays the tuba in the trio Bad Jazz.

Web Resources

"The Losses and Laughter We Grow Into": A Conversation With Krista Tippett
Kevin Kling's Homepage
"Minnesota Original," Video Profile
"Minnesota Bus Ride": NPR Commentary
"The Evolution of One Person's Prayer"