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230 USF students, faculty, and community members attended the poetry reading with Ocean Vuong in November 2024. Vuong shared how writing has allowed him to make sense of his life and honor his family and their histories. His talent and passion were inspiring and getting to share in the conversation meant so much to our literary community.

Rescheduled due to Hurricane Milton, Alison C. Rollins visited USF in February to read and perform excerpts from her poetry collection, Black Bell (Copper Canyon Press, 2024).

Alison shared details about her creative process and highlighted her decision to have an 'imperfect' performance for this particular collection. 

Paul Hlava Ceballos, author of banana [ ], visited USF in February 2025 to meet with MFA students and give a public poetry reading for our students, faculty, staff, and community.

He shared his experience with writing, archival research, publishing, and processing the emotions involved in digging into the history of bananas in Latin America. He also shared poems about his mother and his upcoming pieces inspired by his work with echocardiography.

Dana Levin, author of Now Do You Know Where You Are, visited campus for an engaging Q&A session with MFA students before finishing the day with a public poetry reading and on-stage interview. Her poems tangle with love, grief, family, and finding (and re-finding) our place in the world. 

USF Faculty Liz Kicak and Natalie Scenters-Zapico celebrated the release of their new books at a joint book launch on campus. Thank you to the faculty, students, friends, and family who attended the event and have supported these authors along the way. Reliquaries (Finish Line Press) and My Perfect Cognate (Copper Canyon Press) are now available.

Ariana Benson read from her debut poetry collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023) which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize.