Writer Maggie Messitt at TTC on Nov. 10

Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s “About Writing” Visiting Authors Series presents journalist Maggie Messitt, Nov. 10 at 10 a.m. and 2:15 p.m. at the Texas Township Campus in the Student Commons Forum, room 4240.

Kalamazoo Valley English instructor Rob Haight has coordinated the series since 2001. Visiting author appearances give students and community members the opportunity to talk with professional writers and listen to their work. During each of the visits, the authors read from their work from 10 to 10:45 a.m. and talk about their craft from 2:15 to 3 p.m.

Writer Maggie Messitt visits the college on Nov. 10. An independent narrative and immersion journalist, Messitt has spent the last decade reporting from inside under-served communities in southern Africa and middle America. Typically focused on complex issues through the lens of everyday life, her work is deeply invested in rural regions, social justice and environmental sustainability.

A dual-citizen, Messitt lived in northeastern South Africa from 2008 to 2011. During that time, she worked as a long-form reporter, newspaper editor, and the founding director of a writing school for rural African women. Her projects and programs were funded by the International Academy of Film and Television, the Lovely Planet Foundation, and the South African Media Development and Diversity Agency.

Since her return to the U.S., Messitt’s essays have been published in Creative Nonfiction, Mother Jones, The Rumpus, and the Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Tolerance magazine, among others. An excerpt of her first book was recognized by Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, honored for the “best documentary writing for a long-term project,” and her work for Wisconsin Public Television and POV documentary films earned her a 2010 Multimedia Storytelling Fellowship at UC-Berkeley's Knight Digital Media Center. Most recently, Messitt was a 2015 Kenyon Review Peter Taylor Fellow, a John Cady Research Fellow, and a Scholar-in-Residence at Bowers Writers House. Editor of Proximity, a quarterly collection of true stories, Messitt has a BA in journalism and human rights from Boston College and an MFA from Goucher College.

For more information about the series, see the Visiting Writers web page at https://www.kvcc.edu/campuslife/visitingwriters/ or contact Rob Haight, rhaight@kvcc.edu or 269.488.4452.