The Grand Valley Writers Series has a long history of bringing distinguished and emerging writers to campus to read from their work, visit classes, and interact with students across GVSU's campus. In past years, the Grand Valley Writers Series has been proud to host a dynamic and diverse range of writers on campus including Traci Brimhall, Jericho Brown, Peter Ho Davies, Tarfia Faizullah, Jamaal May, Roxane Gay, Claire Vaye Watkins, Derek Palacio, Maggie Smith, Amina Gautier, Dinty W. Moore, Claudia Rankine, David Shields, Vievee Francis, Matthew Olzmann, and many others. 

Bonnie Jo Campbell

Fiction Writer
Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Fiction Craft Talk: 2:30 - 3:45pm, Mary Idema Pew Library, Multipurpose Room
Fiction Reading: 4:00 - 5:15pm, Mary Idema Pew Library, Multipurpose Room

Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the novels The Waters, Once Upon a River, a National Bestseller, and Q Road. Her critically-acclaimed short fiction collections include American Salvage, which was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Women and Other Animals, which won the AWP prize for short fiction; and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters (Autumn 2015). Her story “The Smallest Man in the World” was awarded a Pushcart Prize and her story “The Inventor, 1972″ was awarded the 2009 Eudora Welty Prize from Southern Review. She was a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow.

Patricia Clark, Sasha Debevec-McKenney, and Jane Morton

GVSU Writing Faculty Reading
Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Poetry Reading: 11:30am - 12:45pm, Black Box Theatre, PAC

Patricia Clark is the author of six volumes of poetry, most recently O Lucky Day (Madville Publishing) and Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars (Terrapin Books), Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and has appeared in The Atlantic, Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Slate, and Stand. Awards for her work include a Creative Artist Grant in Michigan, the Mississippi Review Prize, the Gwendolyn Brooks Prize, and co-winner of the Lucille Medwick Prize from the Poetry Society of America. From 2005-2007 she was honored to serve as the poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was Poet-in-Residence and is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney is the author of the poetry collection Joy Is My Middle Name (Fitzcarraldo Editions and W.W. Norton, 2025). She teaches poetry and creative writing at Grand Valley. Sasha received her MFA from New York University, was the 2020–2021 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, and a 2023-2025 Creative Writing Fellow at Emory University. Her poems have appeared in places like The New Yorker, The Yale Review, The Drift, and Granta. She was born in Hartford, Connecticut.

Jane Morton is the author of Shedding Season (Black Lawrence Press) and Snake Lore (Black Lawrence Press). Their individual poems and short fiction can be found in literary journals including West Branch, Gulf Coast, Boulevard, Ninth Letter, and Sixth Finch. They have received a Fulbright Fellowship and a Katharine Bakeless Nason Scholarship for the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and they were a 2025 ASCA Grant recipient in poetry. They teach courses in creative writing, poetry, and editing at GVSU.
 

Jane Zwart

Poet
Tuesday, February 17, 2026

Poetry Craft Talk: 11:30am - 12:45pm, Mary Idema Pew Library, Multipurpose Room
Poetry Reading: 1:00 - 2:15pm, Mary Idema Pew Library, Multipurpose Room

Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University and co-edits book reviews for Plume. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, HAD, and Ploughshares, and her first collection of poems is coming out with Orison Books in Fall 2025.

Donald Quist

Nonfiction & Fiction Writer
Tuesday, April 7, 2026

1:00-2:15pm, Nonfiction Reading, Mary Idema Pew Library, Multipurpose Room
2:30-3:45pm, Craft Talk, Mary Idema Pew Library, Multipurpose Room

Donald Quist is author of two essay collections, Harbors, a Foreword INDIES Bronze Winner and International Book Awards Finalist, and To Those Bounded. He has a linked story collection, For Other Ghosts. His writing has appeared in AGNI, North American Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and was Notable in Best American Essays. He is creator of the online nonfiction series PAST TEN. Donald has received fellowships from Sundress Academy for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Kimbilio Fiction. He is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University of Missouri. 

Be sure to check out past seasons of the Grand Valley Writers Series. Any questions about the series should be referred to Grand Valley Writers Series Coordinator and Associate Professor Beth Peterson ([email protected]).