Fall Readings Series

Related Information
grossmont.edu/frs

a color-blocked banner with the letters F, R, and S

Fall Readings Series 

The Creative Writing Program's annual Fall Reading Series presents a season of events celebrating literature, showcasing award-winning authors, and honoring the inspiration to write. Free of charge and open to the public, our events are generously underwritten by the Grossmont College English Department, the GC Academic Affairs Symposium and Lecture Fund, and the Foundation for Grossmont and Cuyamaca Colleges (FGCC) Creative Writing Fund. Please consider visiting the FGCC Creative Writing Fund to make a tax deductible contribution that will help us continue bringing literary excellence to our students and community. Thank you!

 

PARKING AND ACCESSIBILITY

For our off-campus visitors, parking is free in all available spaces designated for use by students; permits are not required. All venues are wheelchair accessible. If you would like an accommodation for ASL interpreter services (on-site or Zoom), CLICK HERE to submit a request to the college's Deaf & Hard-of-Hearing Services Supervisor, Denise Robertson: denise.robertson@gcccd.edu • (619) 644-7499.

2026 FRS Calendar 

Click author names for additional info, including bios, event details, links, and resources. Campus information, directions, and maps are available HERE.

 

Event Date Time Location

 

      

Myriam Gurba novelist, fiction writer, essayist

(featured author of the 2026 Lester Bangs Memorial "Banned Books" reading), award-winning author of the narrative non-fiction work, Poppy State, and the true-crime memoir, Mean, ranked in O, the Oprah Magazine, as one of the "Best LGBTQ Books of All Time"
Oct. 7
2-3:20pm
Griffin Gate southwest outside corner of the Student Center, Building 60

 

      

Oscar Hokeah novelist

author of Calling for a Blanket Dance, winner of the 2023 PEN/Hemingway Award, and inspired by Hokeah's Cherokee, Kiowa, and Mexican heritage, a community spanning Oklahoma and the United States-Mexico international border
Oct. 19
2-3:20pm
Griffin Gate

 

      

Blas Falconer poet

editor-in-chief at Poetry International Online, recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and author of Thom Gunn Award-winning collection, Rara Avis
Nov. 12
2-3:20pm
Griffin Gate

 

      

New Voices student reading

showcase of performative readings of original works by exceptional student writers from the Fall 2026 semester's CWP courses

 
Dec. 7
6-7:30pm
Griffin Gate

56565656565

Find details below about our 2026 season of events

or download our 2026 FRS Newsletter-Flier

H

a flier cover with a stylized dartboard and colorblocked letters F, R, and S

G

65656565656

 

Myriam Gurba novelist, fiction writer, essayist, and reviewer

Lester Bangs Memorial "Banned Books" Reading

Wednesday October 7, 2-3:20pm Griffin Gate

photo by Geoff Cordner

a pink book cover for “Poppy State” by Myriam Gurba, with a stylized flower and rootsPhotograph of a smiling person, Myriam Gurba, with short dark hair wearing a red shirta book cover for “Mean” by Myriam Gurba, with a blue sky and paved road

Writer and activist Myriam Gurba is the author of the short story collection, Dahlia Season (Manic D Press 2007), winner of the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction; and, the true-crime memoir, Mean (Coffee House Press 2017), which was a finalist for the Judy Grahn Award in 2018, ranked in O, the Oprah Magazine, as one of the "Best LGBTQ Books of All Time," and named by The New York Times as one of 2017's five best memoirs. Her essay collection, Creep: Accusations and Confessions (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster 2023), was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award for Criticism and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. Gurba's most recent book, Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings (Timber Press 2025), a botanical memoir featuring California flora, is inspired by the experience of susto, a condition of soul loss.  

 

After graduating from U.C. Berkeley, Gurba's writing career began in the queer publishing industry with lesbian erotic magazine On Our Backs. In 2011 and in 2015, she toured with spoken-word and performance art collective Sister Spit. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Vox, Paris Review, and elsewhere. She has also authored several chapbooks, including Wish You Were Me (Future Tense Books, 2011), Sweatsuits of the Damned (RADAR Productions, 2013), and River Candy (eohippus labs, 2015).

 

Myriam Gurba is the Editor-in-Chief of the online cultural criticism and commentary magazine, Tasteful Rude, and has co-hosted the advice podcast, AskBiGrlz, with fellow author, graphic artist, and cartoonist MariNaomi (a.k.a. Mari Naomi Schaal). Gurba's 2019 scathing critique of Jeanine Cummins's novel, American Dirt, went viral and helped spark a heated national debate about race, representation, and publishing practices in the United States.

 

Find out more about Myriam Gurba on her official website: myriamgurba.com.

 

Lester Bangs Memorial Reading / U.S. Banned Books Week

 

Lester Bangs picture discMyriam Gurba is the keynote presenter of the Lester Bangs Memorial Reading, held yearly to honor Grossmont College alumnus and legendary rock critic for Rolling Stone and Creem, Leslie Conway Bangs, who popularized terms such as "punk rock" and "heavy metal." In 2009, Grossmont College officially honored Bangs’s international celebrity status by dedicating to him a bronze "Walk of Fame" plaque, located in the Main Quad in front of the Tech Mall.

 

a logo of a red book wrapped in yellow caution tape that reads "Banned Books Week"This year's Lester Bangs Memorial Reading coincides with U.S. National Banned Books Week, an annual event sponsored by the American Library Association promoting open access to information and the freedom to express ideas. Banned Books Week runs from October 4th through 10th. This year's theme is, "Let Books Be — Protect the Freedom to Read."

 

Books by the Author

  • Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings (Timber Press 2025)
  • Creep: Accusations and Confessions (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster 2023)
  • Letters to a Writer of Color (Penguin Random House 2023)
  • Letter to a Bigot (Scribd 2020)
  • Mean (Coffee House Press 2017)
  • Painting Their Portraits in Winter (Manic D Press 2017)
  • Dahlia Season (Manic D Press 2007)

Selected Writings Online

Reviews and Interviews

Media

  • "Myriam Gurba Interview | Razorcake." YouTube uploaded by RazorcakeGorsky, 31 August 2020.
  • "Myriam Gurba at Radar Reading Series [reads "Twinsicle," "Sweatsuits of the Damned," "Georgia O'Queef"]." YouTube, uploaded by San Francisco Public Library, 3 July 2014.

65656565656

Oscar Hokeah novelist

Monday October 19, 2-3:20pm Griffin Gate

 

a portrait of a person, Oscar Hokeah, with glasses, braided hair, and a stoic expression

A Latinx citizen of Cherokee Nation and the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, Oscar Hokeah holds an MA in English with a concentration in Native American Literature from the University of Oklahoma, and a BFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), with a minor in Indigenous Liberal Studies. Recipient of the Truman Capote Scholarship Award through the Institute of American Indian Arts and the Native Writer Award through the Taos Summer Writers Conference, Hokeah's writing has been published in Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, World Literature Today, American Short Fiction, South Dakota Review, Yellow Medicine Review, Surreal South, Red Ink Magazine, and elsewhere.

 

an orange book cover for “Calling for a Blanket Dance” by Oscar Hokeah, with a stylized human profile

Raised within the tribal circles of Tahlequah and Lawton, Oklahoma, Hokeah is a regionalist Native American writer of literary fiction whose interests lie in capturing the intertribal, transnational, and multicultural aspects of these communities. Calling For a Blanket Dance tells protagonist Ever Geimausaddle's story of mixed Native/Mexican heritage, but it is also a decolonization narrative exploring the connected themes of intergenerational trauma and poverty. Calling For a Blanket Dance is the winner of the PEN America/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize/Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.

 

Still living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where he was raised, Hokeah has worked over the last two decades with Intermountain Youth Centers and the Santa Fe Mountain Center, serving Pueblo, Apache, and Diné peoples. 

 

Find out more about Oscar Hokeah and Calling For a Blanket Dance on his official website: oscarhokeah.com.

 

Books by the Author

  • Calling for a Blanket Dance (Algonquin Books, 2022)

Reviews and Interviews

Media

  • "Oscar Hokeah | Fully Booked Podcast." YouTube, uploaded by Kirkus Reviews 25 July 2022.
  • "'You Don’t Speak For Me' by Oscar Hokeah." YouTube, uploaded by Oscar Hokeah 14 April 2018.

65656565656

Blas Falconer poet, editor, and translator

Thursday November 12, 2-3:20pm Griffin Gate

Photo by Emily Petrie

a portrait of a person, Blas Falconer, with dark hair and blue denim shirt

Born and raised in Virginia, Queer Latinx poet and editor Blas Falconer is the author of Rara Avis (Four Way Books 2024), winner of the Thom Gunn Award; Forgive the Body This Failure (Four Way Books, 2018); The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, 2012); and  A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press, 2007).  He is also a co-editor for The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity (University of Arizona Press, 2011) and Mentor & Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010).

 

His awards include a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant, the New Delta Review Eyster Prize for Poetry, and the Barthelme Fellowship. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Poetry Northwest, Harvard Review, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, Poetry Society of America, the Academy of American Poets, Crab Orchard Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, and many others.

 

a book cover "The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity," co-edited by Blas Falconer, with a colorful, abstractly patterned fish

a black and white book cover for “Rara Avis” by Blas Falconer, with a shirtless, darkly statuesque staring ahead

Blas Falconer earned an MFA from the University of Maryland and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. Currently teaching in San Diego State University's MFA program, he is also editor-in-chief at Poetry International Online. 

 

Learn more about Blas Falconer on his website: blasfalconer.com.

 

Books by the Author

  • Rara Avis (Four Way Books 2024)
  • Forgive the Body This Failure (Four Way Books, 2018)
  • The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, 2012)
  • A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press, 2007)
  • The Perfect Hour (Pleasure Boat Studio: A Literary Press, 2006).

Books Edited/Co-Edited

  • The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity (University of Arizona Press, 2011)
  • Mentor & Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets (Southern Illinois University Press, 2010)

Interviews

Selected Poems Online

Media

  • "Blas Falconer ~ Poetry.LA Interview." YouTube, uploaded by Poetry.LA 27 November 2022.
  • "Blas Falconer: Orphan - Sierra Poetry Festival." YouTube, uploaded by Nevada County Arts Council 18 April 2020.

65656565656

New Voices student literary reading

Monday December 7, 6-7:30pm Griffin Gate

 

A program cover for the New Voices student reading with a colorful mid-century retro design.This popular showcase of writing talent is curated from the current semester’s Creative Writing Program workshops and classes. Students are selected by their writing instructors to perform original works of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, and hybrid forms.

 

Learn about our Creative Writing Program and our student-produced literary journal, Acorn Review, at grossmont.edu/cwp. 

 

 

65656565656

 

 

a color-blocked banner with the letters F, R, and S

grossmont.edu/frs