The Writing Seminars hosts a wide array of writers across literary disciplines, including poets, novelists, translators, and biographers. Our regular reading series connects acclaimed writers from around the world with Baltimore communities at Johns Hopkins and beyond.
Our events are always free and open to the public, and include lively Q&A, catered receptions, books signings, and sales in partnership with Greedy Reads. If you would like to receive email announcements about our events, please contact [email protected].
Amaud Jamaul Johnson: Sullivan and Elder Visiting Poet
Gilman Hall 50Amaud Jamaul Johnson is the author of three poetry collections, Red Summer, selected by Carl Phillips as winner of the Dorset Prize, Darktown Follies, winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award […]
Paul Muldoon: “A History of Ireland in Ten Poems”
Gilman Hall 50Through the prism of his own poems, Paul Muldoon will offer a brief survey of Irish history from earliest times to the present day. This illustrated lecture will feature poems […]
Writing Seminars Presents: Dora Malech
Gilman Hall 50Dora Malech's latest book of poetry is Trying × Trying, out from Carnegie Mellon University Press in October 2025. Previous collections include Flourish, Stet, Say So, and Shore Ordered Ocean; her poems appear in publications […]
Patricia Smith: President’s Reading Series – Literature of Social Import
Gilman Hall 50Patricia Smith is the award-winning author of eight critically acclaimed books of poetry, including Unshuttered (Triquarterly Books, 2023); Incendiary Art (Triquarterly Books, 2017), winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, the 2018 NAACP […]
Carl Phillips: Turnbull Lecture
Carl Phillips is the author of 17 books of poetry, most recently Scattered Snows, to the North (2024) and Then the War: And Selected Poems 2007-2020, which won the 2023 […]
Chang-Rae Lee: Chaffee Visiting Writer
Chang-rae Lee is the author of six novels: Native Speaker (1995), A Gesture Life (1999), Aloft (2004), The Surrendered (2010), which was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, On Such a Full Sea (2014) which was a Finalist for the […]
Amanda Gunn & Gwen Kirby: MFA Alumni Reading
Amanda Gunn grew up just at the edge of the woods in southern Connecticut with two older brothers. A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, she is a doctoral candidate in English […]
Writing Seminars Presents: Susan Choi
Susan Choi is the author of Flashlight, which has been longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize, and Trust Exercise, which received the National Book Award for fiction, as well as the novels The […]
Heather McHugh: Albert Dowling Visiting Writer
Heather McHugh, recipient of a 2009 MacArthur fellowship, is the author of thirteen books of poetry, translation, and literary essays. Her prize-winning translations include a Griffin International Poetry Prize selection, […]
Jonathan Franzen: President’s Reading Series – Literature of Social Import
Jonathan Franzen is the author of six novels, most recently Crossroads and Purity, and five works of nonfiction, including The Discomfort Zone, Farther Away, and The End of the End of the Earth. Among his honors […]