Visiting Writers Series Welcomes Bonnie Jo Campbell on Feb. 2

Kalamazoo Valley's "About Writing" Visiting Writers series is coordinated by English instructor Julie Stotz-Ghosh, Ph.D., and offers students and community members the opportunity to talk with professional writers and listen to their work. The visits take place in the Student Commons Theater, Room 4240, at the Texas Township Campus. All events are free, open to the public and include a craft talk and a reading by the author.

BONNIE JO CAMPBELL
with film producer/director Haroula Rose
Feb. 2 | Texas Township Campus
2 p.m.: Reading in the Student Commons Lounge
5 p.m. in Dale B. Lake Auditorium Bonnie Jo Campbell in conversation with Haroula Rose (director of the film, Once Upon a River)
6 p.m. Dale B. Lake Auditorium, Film Screening of Once Upon a River
In partnership with the Kalamazoo Film Society and the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, Kalamazoo Valley will host a conversation with Campbell and Rose about the film adaptation of Campbell's book "Once Upon a River," a meandering story of survival about a Native American girl's search for her estranged mother. Campbell will also discuss her new novel, "The Waters," which will be released in January 2024. On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp - an area known as "The Waters" to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan - herbalist Hermine "Herself" Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations.

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
Feb. 27 | virtual event | 7 p.m.
The award-winning Palestinian-American poet and essayist describes herself as a "wandering poet." She has spent more than 40 years traveling the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. She is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes of poetry and prose for adults and children, including "19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East" (a finalist for the National Book Award) and "The Turtle of Michigan: A Novel." She was named the 2019-2021 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. In 2020 she was awarded the Ivan Sandorf Award for Lifetime Achievement by the National Book Critics Circle.

KAI HARRIS
April 11 | Student Commons Theater
Texas Township Campus
10 a.m. craft talk | 2:15 p.m. reading
Harris is a writer and educator from Detroit, Michigan who uses her voice to uplift the Black community through realistic fiction centered on the Black experience. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Santa Clara University. Harris' novel, "What the Fireflies Knew," a 2023 Michigan Notable Book, is the college's common read selection for Winter Semester 2024. After her father dies of an overdose and the debts incurred from his addiction cause the loss of the family home in Detroit, almost-11-year-old Kenyatta Bernice (KB) and her teenage sister, Nia, are sent by their overwhelmed mother to live with their estranged grandfather in Lansing.