Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College

Discover the Contemporary Writers Series

Contemporary Writers Series 2025-2026

Season 29 of the Contemporary Writers Series will focus on Sowing Stories: Seeds, Ideas, Tales.

Always engaging, inspiring, and thought-provoking, the Contemporary Writers Series is a curated look at the literature in our lives. Join us for this fresh series of author talks on the Aquinas College campus.

Art & Music CenterAll presentations are free and open to the public. They take place in the Kretschmer Recital Hall in the Art & Music Center from 6-7 p.m. Free parking is available in the large parking lot next to Sturrus Sports & Fitness Center off of Fulton Street.

 

Jeff Zentner

Jeff Zentner

Thursday, September 25, 2025
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Jeff Zentner is the author of New York Times Notable Books The Serpent King and In the Wild Light, as well as Goodbye Days, Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee, Colton Gentry's Third Act, and Sunrise Nights, coauthored with Brittany Cavallaro. Among other honors, he has won the ALA’s William C. Morris Award, the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award twice, the Muriel Becker Award, the International Literacy Association Award, and been longlisted twice for the Carnegie Medal. His books have been translated into fifteen languages and been featured on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and in Vanity Fair and People Magazine. Kirkus Reviews named The Serpent King one of the best books of the 21st Century. Before becoming a writer, he was a musician who recorded with Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, and Debbie Harry. He lives in Nashville.

  • The Serpent King, 2016
  • Goodbye Days, 2017
  • Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee, 2019
  • In the Wild Light, 2021
  • Colton Gentry's Third Act, 2024

 

Aimee NezhukumatathilAimee Nezhukumatathil

Thursday, November 6, 2025
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Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the book of food essays Bite By Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees and the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments. She also wrote five previous poetry collections including Night Owl and Oceanic. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, NAAEE’s 2024 Pepe Marcos-Iga Award for Innovation in Environmental Education, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She is poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

  • Miracle Fruit: poems, 2003
  • At the Drive-in Volcano: Poems, 2007
  • Oceanic, 2018
  • World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, 2020
  • Bite by Bite: Nourishments & Jamborees, 2024

 

Christopher Merrill

Christopher Merrill

Thursday, March 26, 2026
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Christopher Merrill has published eight collections of poetry, including Watch Fire, for which he received the Lavan Younger Poets Award from the Academy of American Poets, and On the Road to Lviv; many edited volumes and translations; and six books of nonfiction, among them, Only the Nails Remain: Scenes from the Balkan Wars, Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, and The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War. His writings have been translated into nearly forty languages; his journalism appears widely; his honors include a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres from the French government, numerous translation awards, and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial and Ingram Merrill Foundations. As director of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa since 2000, Merrill has conducted cultural diplomacy missions to more than fifty countries. He served on the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO from 2011-2018, and in April 2012 President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Council on the Humanities.

  • Brilliant Water, 2001
  • Things of the Hidden God: Journey to the Holy Mountain, 2005
  • The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War, 2011
  • Self-Portrait with Dogwood, 2017
  • Flares, 2021

 

CONTACT INFO

Contemporary Writers Series
cws@aquinas.edu

Connect Contemporary Writers Series