Events

9/10/2026
6:30 PM Special Collections, 1101 19th Ave S.

Vanderbilt Reading Series: Natasha Trethewey

Pulitzer Prize-winner Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014), while also serving as the Poet Laureate of the State of Mississippi (2012-2016). She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (2020) and five collections of poetry, including Monument: Poems New & Selected (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2020, she received the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Poetry from the Library of Congress.

Program Schedule:

6:30 - Literary Salon, First Floor Lounge
7:00 - Reading, Second Floor Lecture Hall
8:00 - Book Signing

Free and open to the public. Vanderbilt students, faculty, and staff can RSVP on Anchor Link.

9/24/2026
6:30 PM Special Collections, 1101 19th Ave S.

Vanderbilt Reading Series: Peter Orner

Peter Orner is the author of eight books, most recently the novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, named one of the best books of 2025 by the New Yorker and the Chicago Tribune, as well as the essay collections, Still No Word from You, a finalist for the PEN Award for the Art of the Essay, and Am I Alone Here?, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s, the Paris Review and has been awarded four Pushcart Prizes. With Yvette Benavides, he’s the co-host of the Lonely Voice Podcast on Texas Public Radio. Orner recently led short courses on James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Melville’s Moby-Dick for the Community of Writers/Writers’ Annex. He teaches at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.

Program Schedule:

6:30 - Literary Salon, First Floor Lounge
7:00 - Reading, Second Floor Lecture Hall
8:00 - Book Signing

Free and open to the public. Vanderbilt students, faculty, and staff can RSVP on Anchor Link.

10/8/2026
6:30 PM Special Collections, 1101 19th Ave S.

Vanderbilt Reading Series: Elise Paschen

Elise Paschen is the author of six poetry collections, most recently, Blood Wolf Moon (winner of the Foreword Indie Book of the Year Award in Poetry and the Oklahoma Book Award in Poetry), as well as Tallchief, The Nightlife, Bestiary, Infidelities (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), and Houses: Coasts. As an undergraduate at Harvard, she received the Garrison Medal for poetry. An enrolled member of the Osage Nation, Paschen has received the Rupert Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs Medal. Her poems have been published in Poetry Magazine and The New Yorker, among other magazines, and in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Poetry and A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry.

Program Schedule:

6:30 - Literary Salon, First Floor Lounge
7:00 - Reading, Second Floor Lecture Hall
8:00 - Book Signing

Free and open to the public. Vanderbilt students, faculty, and staff can RSVP on Anchor Link.