Sponsored by the John C. Sturtevant Memorial Lectureship
The Single Voice Reading Series provides students with an opportunity to hear and meet nationally known writers. Readers have included John Updike, Carolyn Forché, Tobias Wolff, Jane Hirshfield, W.D. Snodgrass, Richard Blanco, Robert Olen Butler, Henri Cole, Edward Hirsch, Afaa Michael Weaver, Tim O’Brien, and Mark Doty. Look at the archives for a more complete list.
The Single Voice Reading Series is organized by the Department of English at Allegheny College. For more information, contact Christopher Bakken, Professor of English.
Single Voice Reading Series 2025-2026
Sarah Ghazal Ali
Thursday, September 18th, 2025
Sarah Ghazal Ali is the author of Theophanies (Alice James Books, 2024), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award and California Book Award and a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. Sarah is the poetry editor for West Branch and an Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College.
Jessie van Eerden
Thursday, October 23rd, 2025
Jessie van Eerden is the author of two essay collections, Yoke & Feather (new from Dzanc Books in November 2024) and The Long Weeping, and three novels: Glorybound, My Radio Radio, and Call It Horses which won the 2019 Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing, Oxford American, AGNI, Image, New England Review, and other magazines and anthologies. She has been awarded the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, the Michael Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize, the Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, the Milton Fellowship, and a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Jessie holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and teaches at Hollins University.
Soledad Caballero & Catharina Coenen
Thursday, November 13th, 2025
Soledad Caballero is a Macondo, CantoMundo, and StoryKnife fellow. Her collection, I Was a Bell won the 2019 Benjamin Saltman poetry prize, was the 2022 International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry book of the year, and a 2022 International Latino Book Award winner. Her second collection, Flight Plan, was published by Red Hen Press in September. Her work has appeared in Missouri Review, Iron Horse Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She is a Professor of English at Allegheny College
Catharina Coenen is the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing. Her essay collection Unexploded Ordnance: What she felt. What they feared. How they survived. What they saw. will be published by Restless Books on October 29, 2025. Her essays have also appeared in The Threepenny Review, The American Scholar, The Christian Science Monitor, and Best of the Net. She is a Professor of Biology at Allegheny College.
Christopher Bakken
Thursday, February 19th, 2026
Christopher Bakken’s fourth book of poetry, Driving the Beast, was published in the Sewanee Poetry Series in 2025. He is also the author of the culinary memoir, Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table. His work has appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad, including The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, and Best American Poetry. Twice a Fulbright Scholar, Bakken serves as director of Writing Workshops in Greece, and he is a Professor of English at Allegheny College.
Jessica Elisheva Emerson
Thursday, March 19th, 2026
Jessica Elisheva Emerson is a native Tucsonan who spent 22 years in Los Angeles before returning to the Sonoran desert where she lives with her husband and children. Her award-winning debut novel Olive Days, was published by Counterpoint Press in September 2024. Her poems and stories have been published in a number of journals, and she is also a produced playwright.