A.K. Smith Reading Series

Spring 2025 A.K. Smith Reading Series Schedule

Readings are open to all! Food and beverages will be served.

CT Student Poetry Circuit

Tuesday, February 18th @ 4:30pm, Reese Room, Smith House

Each year the Connecticut Poetry Circuit selects five student poets from colleges across the state to participate in a series of readings at Connecticut campuses in the spring semester. This year, our own Gemma Feltovich is among those selected to represent their college.  We hope you’ll join us to support Gemma and hear the original work of five outstanding young poets.

Jonah Barton 

Jonah Barton is a Junior at Wesleyan, where he majors in English. He enjoys reading, sitting on the porch, and watching football. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and was raised in Nashville, Tennessee. 

Maisie Bilston

Maisie Bilston is a Junior at Yale University, where she majors in English.  Her poetry has been published in the Yale Literary Magazine.  She is the recipient of the 2024 Gordon Barber Memorial Prize for undergraduate poetry at Yale and the 2023 Francis Bergen Memorial Prize for best poem published in the Yale Literary Magazine.  Maisie is the Managing Literary Editor at the Yale Literary Magazine and a reader for The Yale Review, and she has interned for three years at American Short Fiction. She lived in Berlin for a year and spends summers with her mother’s family in England, where she’d love to study after graduating. When she is not writing, Maisie enjoys reading Agatha Christie novels, taking long walks, and spending time with her dog, a black labrador called Mephistopheles who has yet to live up to his name. 

Gemma Feltovich 

Gemma Feltovich (she/they) is Senior at Trinity College, where she majors in English and minors in Religious Studies and Hispanic Studies.  Gemma’s poems have been published in the Trinity College student literary magazine The Vernacular.  Her poem “Catching a Gecko: On Possession” was also published online for the 2023 Academy of American Poets prize (as the poet selected from Trinity College).  She received the 2023 Academy of American Poets prize as well as the 2023 John Curtis Underwood Memorial Prize in Poetry (first place).  Gemma is a peer research assistant at the Trinity College library.  She is also a classical singer who loves to cook.  Gemma has lived in 6 different cities in my life, and currently calls Minneapolis home. 

Charlotte Ungar 

Charlotte Ungar is a Senior at the University of Connecticut, where she majors in English with a creative writing concentration.  She is currently the poetry editor at the Long River Review, UConn’s literary magazine. Charlotte’s hometown is Scarsdale, NY. 

Elliot Wilson 

Elliot Wilson (they/she) is a Junior at Quinnipiac University, where they major in English and minor in Art and Sociology. Their poetry has been published in Montage Literary Magazine at Quinnipiac, and they have received First Place in the Thornton Wilder Fiction Prize at the university. They are currently looking for an internship and considering continuing onto graduate school. When not writing, their hobbies include cooking, listening to music, and making old things into new things. Elliot’s hometown is Norton, MA. 

 

Dr. Lisa Thompson: “Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar” with performance by Taji Senior

Wednesday, February 26th @ 5pm, Grand Room, Admissions

Sponsored by the A.K. Smith Reading/ Scholars Series; Co-sponsored by Women & Gender Studies, American Studies and Theater and Dance.

Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar is a performance lecture about finding your voice, honoring all your gifts, and sharing your story in a multitude of ways. Part memoir, Black history, motivational speech and theatrical reading, Dancing on the Slash inspires us to think deeply and embrace bold life choices even in uncertain times.

Lisa B. Thompson is an award-winning playwright, librettist and Patton Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also an affiliate faculty member of the departments of Theatre and Dance, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, English, and the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies where she served as the Associate Director. Thompson received her BA in English and MA in African American Studies from UCLA, and her PhD from Stanford University’s Program in Modern Thought and Literature. She is the author of four books Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (University of Illinois Press, 2009), which received Honorable Mention in competition for the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Book Prize from the National Women’s Studies Association; Single Black Female (Samuel French, Inc., 2012); and Underground, Monroe, The Mamalogues: Three Plays (Northwestern University Press, 2020), and The Mamalogues (Samuel French, Inc., 2021). Her creative work has been anthologized in Contemporary Plays by African American Women: Ten Complete Works (University of Illinois Press, 2015) and Catch the Fire: A Cross-Generational Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (Riverhead Books, 1998). Thompson’s essays and interviews appear in Teaching Black (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021), Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Are You Entertained? New Essays on Black Popular Culture in the 21stCentury (Duke University Press, 2020), The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance (2018), Art, Creativity, and Politics in Africa (Palgrave, 2018), Blacktino Queer Performance (Duke University Press, 2016), From Bourgeois to Boojie: Black Middle Class Performances (Wayne State University Press, 2011), The Washington Post, NPR and Criterion Collection. Thompson’s public scholarship also includes co-hosting and co-producing Black Austin Matters with Dr. Richard J. Reddick, a podcast and bi-monthly radio segment on KUT, Austin’s NPR station. The interview show engages wide-ranging guests on a variety of topics of interest to the Black community throughout the Greater Austin area.

Thompson’s plays have been produced around the country, off-Broadway and internationally. Her plays include The Black Feminist Guide to the Human Body (University of Texas 2024-2025 University Research Excellence Creative Endeavor Award, B. Iden Payne Award Feature-length Script, and 2024 Association for Theatre in Higher Education Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award Honorable Mention); The Mamalogues (2019 Broadway World Regional Awards: Best Writing of an Original Work); Monroe (2018 Austin Playhouse Festival of New Texas Plays Winner); Underground (Winner, 2017 Austin Critics Table David Mark Cohen New Play Award); Dinner (Crossroads Theatre Genesis New Play Festival); and the off-Broadway comedy Single Black Female (2005 LA Weekly Theatre Award for best comedy nominee). Thompson’s plays have been produced and/or developed by an array of theater organizations including Crossroads Theatre Company, Ensemble Theatre, the Brava Theater Center, Theatre Rhinoceros, New Professional Theatre, Black Spectrum Theatre, Company of Angels Theater, Vortex Repertory Company, Austin Playhouse, Congo Square Theatre, and the National Black Theatre Festival. Thompson has received fellowships and research support for her scholarship and art from several institutions including the American Council of Learned Societies, Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, the Humanities Institute at University of Texas at Austin, the University of California’s Office of the President, the Michele R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, UCLA’s Center for African American Studies, University of Texas at Austin’s College of Liberal Arts, Stanford University’s Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, The New School, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, National Performance Network, and MacDowell. Since 2021 Thompson has served as the inaugural Advisor to the Dean for Faculty Mentoring and Support in the College of Liberal Arts. In that role she established the COLA Dean’s Faculty Mentoring Award, the COLA Faculty Mentoring Fellows program, and the COLA Faculty Mentoring Circles among other initiatives. Thompson is not only an outstanding scholar, writer, and administrator but she has also been recognized for her teaching by the Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, the Services for Students with Disabilities, and the Texas Exes.

Website: http://www.lisabthompson.com 

Podcast: Black Austin Matters 

Alejandro Heredia

Tuesday, March 4th @ 4:30pm, Reese Room, Smith House

Alejandro Heredia is a writer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from LAMBDA Literary, Dominican Studies Institute, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, and elsewhere. He served as the 2023-2024 Ann Plato Fellow at Trinity College, where he taught creative writing and English literature courses. Loca is his debut novel.

 

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

Tuesday, March 25th @ 4:30pm, Reese Room, Smith House

Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is the author of the National Book Award finalist THE UNDOCUMENTED AMERICANS. Her debut novel, CATALINA, was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her work, which focuses on race, culture, and immigration, has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Elle, This American Life, n+1, The New Inquiry, and Vogue.   

Jericho Brown

Thursday, April 17 @ 4:30pm, Washington Room, Mather Hall