Read Local: Meet With Professional Writers and Leave Inspired

Visiting Writers at Kalamazoo Valley Community College is kicking off a new event called "Read Local." Every year, the college will feature and celebrate the work of local writers from the Kalamazoo area, Southwest Michigan and Michigan at large. Meet writers from the community and hear about what inspires them.

This year, the visits take place April 15 at 10 a.m. in the Student Commons Lounge, Room 4250, at the Texas Township Campus. All events are free, open to the public and include a craft talk and a reading by the author.

The featured writers include Scott Bade, Robert Haight, Kathleen McGookey, Denise Miller and Jack Ridl.

Scott Bade
Scott Bade is the author of "Preemptive Elegy" (2024 - Kelsay Books) and the chapbook "My Favorite Thing About Desire," co-winner of the 2018 Celery City Chapbook contest. He teaches at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and Kalamazoo College. Bade's award-winning poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his poems have appeared in Fugue, Shadowgraph, Reed Magazine, Foothill and elsewhere.

Robert Haight
Robert Haight has published two full-length poetry collections, "Emergences and Spinner Falls" (New Issues Poetry and Prose) and "Feeding Wild Birds" (Mayapple Press); a chapbook, "Water Music" (Ridgeway Press); and essays and articles on fly fishing, the environment, education and spirituality for a variety of anthologies, journals and magazines. He divides his time between the Lower and Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Kathleen McGookey
Kathleen McGookey has published five books and four chapbooks, most recently "Cloud Reports" (Celery City Chapbooks) and "Paper Sky" (Press 53). Her work has appeared in many journals including Copper Nickel, Epoch, Glassworks, Hunger Mountain, Los Angeles Review, North American Review and The Southern Review. She lives in Middleville, Michigan.

Denise Miller
Denise Miller is a poet, playwright and mixed-media artist and professor. Their book publications include "Core," nominated for a 2016 American Book Award and a 2016 Pushcart Prize. They won the 2020 Sexton Prize for Poetry for their full-length poetry collection, "A Ligature for Black Bodies," and their most recent collection, "How to Make an American Mass Shooter," was released by Querencia Press in October 2024. Their work has appeared in Callaloo, the African American Review, Rattle, the Offing, Rogue Agent, Allium - A Journal of Poetry and Prose, Dunes Review and Ruminate among others. Their produced plays include "Ligatures" (adapted for the stage) and "Before the Shooting." Their fellowships and residencies include Hedgebrook, a William Randolph Hearst Fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society, Storyknife, a Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Fellowship, Willapa Bay Artist in Residence a Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts Fellowship and a Prairie Ronde Residency. They are currently working on a novel called the "Work of Hands."

Jack Ridl
Jack Ridl's "All at Once" was published by CavanKerry Press in 2024. His previous collection is "Saint Peter and the Goldfinch" (Wayne State University Press) who also published his "Practicing to Walk Like a Heron" recipient of the ForeWords Review Gold Medal. The Society of Midland Authors named "Broken Symmetry" (Wayne State University Press) that year's finest collection and his "Losing Season" (CavanKerry Press) was featured on NPR. Then Poet Laureate Billy Collins selected his Against Elegies for the Chapbook Award from The Center for Book Arts (NYC). Ridl was named by the Carnegie Foundation Michigan's Professor of the Year. More than 100 of his students are nationally published, several of whom have won first book awards.