Writer and CCNY alumna Hasanthika Sirisena.
Pulitzer Prize winner Tyehimba Jess.
Tyehimba Jess, the 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner, and Hasanthika Sirisena, winner of the 2016 Juniper Prize for Fiction, are this month’s Kowald Reading Series guests at The City College of New York.
Sirisena, a 2006 alumna of City College’s MFA program in creative writing in the Division of Humanities and the Arts, reads from her work 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 24, in the Rifkind Center, NAC room 6/316.
In addition to the Juniper Prize, Sirisena received the 2008 Rona Jaffee Award, a top honor presented to emerging women writers of exceptional talent.
Jess will read in CCNY’s Shepard Hall room 95 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Oct. 30.
He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry with his book “Olio.” The collection also earned the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and received an Outstanding Contribution to Publishing Citation from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.
Olio was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN Jean Stein Book Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Jess’ other book of poetry “Leadbelly,” was a winner of the 2004 National Poetry Series. The Library Journal and Black Issues Book Review both named it one of the “Best Poetry Books of 2005.”
The Kowald Series is made possible through the generosity of The Estate of Kenneth Kowald Fund for Advancing American Literature and the Rifkind Center for the Humanities. All the events are free and open to the public.
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