Smith College English Department

On May 23 at 7pm, Professor Floyd Cheung will talk at Odyssey Bookshop about The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, coedited with Frank Abe

Floyd Cheung in Person Join us on Thursday, May 23 at 7 PM as Floyd Cheung talks about The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, an anthology he edited

New Academy Members Elected in 2024

One week from today! Join us at the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center for the launch of 's Girl in a Bear Suit, winner of the 2023 Elixir Press Poetry Prize. April 4, 7 pm at the BDPC in Wright Hall.

Here's what judge has to say about Girl in a Bear Suit:

“Flip through this book until you come across a title that grabs you. That won’t be difficult. “Love Poem for Seven Starlings,” “Bodies Becoming Other Bodies,” “Callisto: crash course for one who’s never lived as a human woman,” “Sugar Snow,” “Ars Poetica: As Many as Bones in the Human Body,” “Look, Little Donkeys,” ... I mean, come on! Then start reading and enter the playful, dramatic, wonderfully poetic world of Jen Jabaily-Blackburn’s Girl in a Bear Suit.”

A new month, a stellar new book featured here at the BDPC. Come by and browse this just-released anthology of essential q***r voices, and snack on some KitKats while they last! Thanks to for the heads up about the book!

Congratulations to Franny Choi, recent visiting poet at Smith and new Poet Laureate of Northampton!

Poet Laureate Poet Laureate of Northampton

Tonight at 7pm!!

Please join us on October 12 at 7pm for a conversation with Andrew Leland and Jina B. Kim about Leland's new book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight!

Smith Reads: Leaning on Joy This year's Smith Reads book choice is a collection of essays by Ross Gay that celebrates the search for "ordinary wonders" in challenging times. Gay will be on campus in September for a poetry reading and a special session with new students.

Please join us on October 12 at 7pm for a conversation with Andrew Leland and Jina B. Kim about Leland's new book, The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight!

Botanical Inspirations: New Views of Sylvia Plath A new exhibit at Lyman Plant House and Conservatory created by Professor Colin Hoag and his students, uses archival images and Plath's writing to shed new light on the celebrated alum's life and literary inspiration.

Thanks to the many Smith College Asian American literature students who inspired -- and as research assistants worked on --this forthcoming book, edited by Professor Floyd Cheung and independent scholar Frank Abe:

The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration by Edited with an Introduction by Frank Abe and Floyd Cheung | Penguin Random House Canada The collective voice of Japanese Americans defined by a specific moment in time: the four years of World War II during which the US government expelled resident aliens and its own citizens from their homes and imprisoned 125,000 of them in American concentration camps, based solely upon the race the...

TODAY!

Spitfire Poets & Lyrical Faith present Ramya Ramana at the Boutelle-Day Poetry Center on March 31. ⁠
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2pm-4pm: Poetry Workshop with Ramya Ramana⁠
4pm-4:30pm: break⁠
4:30pm-6pm: Feature Performance by Ramya Ramana⁠
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Open to all students! The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center is in Wright Hall on the Smith College Campus.⁠
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Ramya Ramana is an award-winning American author, poet, lyricist and writer. She was born, raised and currently resides in New York. Ramana won the NY Knicks Poetry Slam which awarded her a full tuition scholarship to St. John's University. Soon after, she became the Youth Poet Laureate of NYC. She has since performed at events such as the US Open, Tribeca FilmFestival, TV One's "Verses and Flow," Pharrell's Adidas Campaign, SONY TV's Asian Women in the Arts Awards, The Immigrant Gala, Apollo Theatre Slam finals, Celebrate Bklyn!, The Source Magazine Festival and many more. Her work can be found on the Poetry Foundation and Academy of American Poets websites and in Seventh Wave and The Southhampton Review. Ramana published her first collection of poems through Penmanship Books which was released at Lincoln Center. In addition to performing and writing, Ramana has also worked as an educator and mentor for young poets and young women. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the New School. Ramana is currently working as a librettist for an operetta film. Her hope is to remain a student of wonder and to explain truth sincerely through her work and her life.

Happening next week: A celebration of spring with local readers from latest issue! If you're in , stop by the Old Chapel at UMass Amherst next Thursday the 6th from 6 to 8: https://www.massreview.org/node/11243

Wislawa Szymborska on the Glorious Pastime of Reading (And Books You'll Never Read) "She is much too funny to be a poet," read my initial notes on Wislawa Szymborska's  (July 2, 1923 – February 1, 2012) Nonrequired Reading ,  a wonderful collection of ...

Samantha Paige Rosen ’12 writes this article about her favorite email newsletters—by writers, for writers—that “offer the best of craft and publishing advice, writing prompts, pitch calls, and encouragement and commiseration about the writing life.”

7 Newsletters That Will Improve Your Writing - Electric Literature Writers offering the best of craft and publishing advice, writing prompts, and pitch calls

I Went Out to Hear by Leila Chatti - Poems | Academy of American Poets I Went Out to Hear - The sound of quiet. The sky / indigo, steeping

"The monastic residency was an ordeal, one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it was an ordeal that I chose."

With an introduction from Provost Michael Thurston, and Smith College professor Ruth Ozeki shares her experience studying Zen Buddhism in California, for our series: https://massreview.org/node/11153

Interview with Professor Michael Gorra

Late Style | Michael Gorra, interviewed by Sam Needleman The literary critic Michael Gorra has been writing for the Review, mostly on English-language novels, for just shy of a decade. His subjects have ranged

Ruth Ozeki, Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities and Professor of English Language and Literature, will give her inaugural lecture, "The Book of Form and Emptiness, Zen and the Art of Actualizing Fiction," on Wednesday, December 7 at 5 p.m. in the Conference Center. All are welcome. https://www.smith.edu/about-smith/provost/events

“The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On.” A Poem by Franny Choi. Before the apocalypse, there was the apocalypse of boats: boats of prisoners, boats cracking under sky-iron, boats making corpses bloom like algae on the shore. Before the apocalypse, there was the…

TONIGHT! Matt Donovan & Nathan McClain · November 1, 2022 🌔 - https://mailchi.mp/smith/donovanmclain-11-1

Congratulations to Professor Rosetta Cohen for winning the Willow Run Poetry Book Award!

Willow Run Poetry Book Award Semi-finalists, Finalists and Winner THE WILLOW RUN POETRY BOOK AWARD Semi-Finalists and Finalists and Winner of our 2021/2022 Cycle Are Announced Rosetta Marantz Cohen We are pleased to announce Rosetta Marantz Cohen as the win…

So much to learn from this interview with Professor Ruth Ozeki

‘Novels as collaborations’ Award-winning author and Smith English professor Ruth Ozeki ’80 shares insights into her fourth novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, which recently received the 2022 Women’s Prize for Fiction and is this year's Smith Reads selection.

"I was stunned by the glib nature of the title’s phrasing (the implicit shrug of that “actually” is devastating, or at least it should be), as well as finding that article’s content in a mass-market health magazine accompanied by articles about firmer abs and weight loss."

Matt Donovan discusses poems from his forthcoming collection, "The Dug-Up Gun Museum," from BOA Editions in his interview.
https://massreview.org/node/10778

Congratulations, Professor Naomi Miller!

I’m thrilled to share the news that Mary Wroth’s play, Love’s Victory, will be performed live at Penshurst Place this fall, at the conference on “The Sidneys of Penshurst and Beyond,” where I’ll be reading from Imperfect Alchemist as well as my novel about Mary Wroth, STRANGE LABYRINTH.

http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/shakespeare-and-his-sisters/the-sidneys-of-penshurst-and-beyond-contexts-connections-collaborations/

Not to be missed is the live Renaissance music that will accompany the performance in the stunning Baron's Hall!

By Prof. Tiana Clark

Considering Roe v. Wade, Letters to the Black Body A poem for Saturday