Join the English Department as we celebrate recently published creative writing (and recently completed MFA and PhD degrees in creative writing) by GRCC English Department Faculty.
We are a department that writes!
Event details
Tuesday, March 19 – 6:30-8 p.m. – GRCC ATC Piazza
- 6:15 p.m. - Time to mingle and visit the buffet table.
- 6:30 p.m. - Readings begin, featuring three GRCC faculty writers, listed below.
- 7:15 p.m. - Q & A with Authors: On Writing and a Writer’s Education.
After sharing their work, faculty readers will discuss their writing as well as the education and life of a writer.
A buffet of snacks and beverages will be served.
The 2024 reading features poetry and prose by:
- Katrina Kalisz – Poetry
- Maryann Lesert – Fiction
- Rachel Lutwick-Deaner – Creative Nonfiction
- Michael Sikkema – Poetry
This event is sponsored by the GRCC English Department and Transfer Bridges to the Humanities, U-M.
Author information
Katie Kalisz
Recent publications: Quiet Woman, (Main Street Rag, 2018) Poetry, also recently published in The Amethyst Review, Loch Raven Review, and forthcoming in Third Coast, The Indianapolis Review, and Thimble Lit Magazine.
Bio: Katie Kalisz teaches composition and creative writing at GRCC. Quiet Woman, her first book, was a finalist for the 2018 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. She is the recipient of a 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her second book, Flu Season, is forthcoming in 2025 from Cornerstone Press. You can find her at katiekalisz.com
Maryann Lesert
Recent publications: Land Marks, a Novel (She Writes Press, April 2024).
Bio: Maryann Lesert's first novel, Base Ten (Feminist Press, 2009) followed an astrophysicist’s quest for self among the dunes and the stars. Land Marks (She Writes, 2024) is based on two years of research on fracking in Michigan’s state forests. Her plays have been published by New Issues and in Smith & Kraus’s Best Ten Minute series. Her articles have appeared in EcoWatch and In These Times, and she is a regular presenter on art and activism. Maryann teaches composition and creative writing at GRCC. You can find her at maryannlesert.com.
Rachel Lutwick-Deaner
Rachel Lutwick-Deaner’s recent publications can be found at The Preservation Society, Chaotic Merge, and The Personal Essayist. Her book reviews can be found at Southern Review of Books and on Instagram @professor.ld.
Rachel teaches writing and literature at Grand Rapids Community College. She delights in writing essays that challenge and affirm her readers, and her ultimate goal is to make people laugh, even uncomfortably. Her essay “Show Me Your Linen Closets” will be published in Right to Life: A Human Rights Anthology, and her essay “Nursing Mother” will be published this summer at Story Sanctum.
Michael Sikkema
Recent publications: a series of poems called This Old House / These Dark Woods published online at Cream Scene Carnival .
Bio: Michael Sikkema is the author of 6 full-length poetry collections and a couple dozen chapbooks. Recent publications include a collaborative chapbook written with Gary Barwin, titled Wear the River, and published by Paper View Books in Portugal, as well as a series of visual poems called Dust Constellations in South Florida Poetry Journal. A poetry chapbook called Watch for Deer is forthcoming from Cul-De-Sac of Blood, and a chapbook of typographic visual poetry called Scarecrow I'm a Story and Three Fish is forthcoming from Sigilist Press.
