The Distinguished Visiting Writers Series brings writers to campus to offer a reading and teach an advanced class that offers IC students in the Visiting Writers Workshop the unique opportunity to learn from some of country's foremost writers. All readings are open to the public.

Spring 2025

NoViolet Bulawayo is the author of the novels Glory, and We Need New Names. Her books have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Rathbones Folio Prize, and won the Pen/Hemingway Award, the LA Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, among others. NoViolet earned her MFA at Cornell University, where she currently teaches.

Kwame Dawes is the author of numerous books of poetry and other books of fiction, criticism, and essays. His most recent collection is Sturge Town (Peepal Tree Press, UK 2023). Dawes is Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. He teaches in the Pacific MFA Program and is the Series Editor of the African Poetry Book Series, Director of the African Poetry Book Fund, and Artistic Director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. He is a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Kwame Dawes is the winner of the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the 2022 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. In 2022 Dawes was awarded the Order of Distinction Commander class by the Government of Jamaica. He is the Poet Laureate of Jamaica (2024-2027).

Scott Korb is the director of the MFA in Writing program at Pacific University. He’s the author of The Faith Between Us, Life in Year One Year, and Light without Fire, and is an editor of two academic collections: The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers and Gesturing Toward Reality: David Foster Wallace and Philosophy. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon.