Raymond Carver Reading Series
The Raymond Carver Reading Series features twelve to fourteen prominent writers yearly as part of a large undergraduate class taught by TAs from the Creative Writing Program. The readings have an extended question-and-answer session along with a reading. Recent authors include Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Jamaal May, Monica Youn, Brandon Taylor, Valeria Luiselli, Ilya Kaminsky, and Percival Everett.
Due to the generous support of Leonard and Elise Elman two distinguished authors each year spend two-day residencies at SU: the Richard Elman Visiting Writer and the Leonard and Elise Elman Visiting Writer. Learn more about the late Leonard Elman in this interview with Rob Enslin.
Past readings have been recorded and are in the process of being made available online by Bird Library at SUrface.
All readings take place in Watson Theater in Watson Hall. They begin at 5:00 p.m. and are preceded by a question-and-answer session that begins at 4:00 p.m. They are open to the public.
Natalie Shapero
January 29, 2025
Natalie Shapero’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collections Popular Longing (2021), Hard Child (2017), and No Object (2013), and she has performed at The Pulitzer Arts Foundation, The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at UC Irvine.
Maya Binyam, the Jane and Daniel Present Lecturer
February 12, 2025
Photo by Tonje Thilesen
Maya Binyam is the author of Hangman, which was named a 2024 National Book Foundation “5 under 35” honoree, received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was longlisted for the Women’s Prize and Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. She is the recipient of the 2025 Bard Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in the Paris Review, the New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer in Literature at Claremont McKenna College and an advisory editor of the Paris Review. She lives in Los Angeles.
Christopher Brunt
February 26, 2025
Christopher Brunt is the author of the poetry collection WAR AT HOME (Saturnalia Books, 2024), a finalist for the Alma Book Prize. His poetry, fiction, and essays have been featured in Ploughshares, The Nation, Oxford American, Fugue, Meridian, Copper Nickel, the Cincinnati Review, and other magazines. He has been a finalist for the Saturnalia Book Award, the Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize, and the St. Lawrence Book Award, and shortlisted for the Christopher Smart Poetry Prize. Born and raised in Houston, Texas, he has an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD in English from the University of Southern Mississippi. He currently teaches literature and creative writing at Syracuse University, and is the creator and host of PODRE, a podcast on fatherhood, recovery, and the creative life.
Hari Kunzru, the Don MacNaughton Reader
March 19, 2025
Photo by Clayton Cubitt
Hari Kunzru is the author of seven novels: Blue Ruin, Red Pill, White Tears, Gods Without Men, My Revolutions, Transmission, and The Impressionist. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books and writes the “Easy Chair” column for Harper’s Magazine. He is an Honorary Fellow of Wadham College Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and has been a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at New York University and is the host of the podcast Into the Zone, from Pushkin Industries. He lives in Brooklyn.
Hayan Charara
April 2, 2025
Born in Detroit to Arab immigrants, Hayan Charara is a poet, children’s book author, essayist, and editor. His latest poetry collection, These Trees, Those Leaves, This Flower, That Fruit, was published by Milkweed Editions. His children’s book, The Three Lucys (Lee and Low 2019), received the New Voices Award Honor, and he edited Inclined to Speak, an anthology of contemporary Arab American poetry. With Fady Joudah, he is also a series editor of the Etel Adnan Poetry Prize. Hayan lives in Texas, where he teaches at The Honors College at the University of Houston.
His newest work, Hush, Little Children, will be published by Flexible Press in Fall 2025. His novel follows a couple trying to get pregnant just as a child suicide epidemic breaks out and a fringe group led by a charismatic leader uses disinformation and fear to advance ideologies rooted in hatred.
Claire Messud, the Richard Elman Visiting Writer
April 23, 2025
Claire Messud is the author of six works of fiction. A recipient of a Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her family.