Columbia Writers Series

Welcome to the 2025-2026 Season

All events are free, open to the public, and take place on Clark College's Main Campus at 1933 Fort Vancouver Way.
We look forward to seeing you at the next event.

Danez Smith

November 13, 2025
11:00 a.m. to 12 (noon)
Gaiser Hall (GHL) 213

Danez Smith is the author of four collections, including Don’t Call Us Dead, Homie, and, most recently, Bluff. They are also the curator of Blues In Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes. For their work, Danez has won the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and have been a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the National Book Award, as well as an array of grants, fellowships, and residencies including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Princeton Arts Fellowship. Smith teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and the Black Youth Healing Arts Center in St. Paul, and lives in Minneapolis with their people.

Joe Sacco

February 5, 2026
11:00 a.m. to 12 (noon)
Penguin Union Building (PUB) 258 B-C

Eisner Award-winner Joe Sacco is the author of Footnotes in Gaza, for which he received the Ridenhour Book Prize, as well as Paying the Land, Palestine, Journalism, Safe Area Goražde, and other books. His comics reporting has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, and Harper’s Magazine. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Camille Dungy

May 14, 2026
1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Penguin Union Building (PUB) 258 B-C

Camille T. Dungy is the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden. Soil was named book of the month by Hudsons Booksellers, received the 2024 Award of Excellence in Garden and Nature Writing from The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries, and was on the short list for the PEN/Jean Stein Award. Dungy has also written four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award, and the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, the first anthology to bring African American environmental poetry to national attention. She also co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology and served as assistant editor for Gathering Ground: Celebrating Cave Canem’s First Decade. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, Best American Essays, The 1619 Project, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, over 40 other anthologies, plus dozens of venues including The New Yorker, Poetry, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, and Poets.org. You may know her as the host of Immaterial, a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Magnificent Noise. A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Dungy’s honors include the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, an Honorary Doctorate from SUNY ESF, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry.

Clark College expressly prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, perceived or actual physical or mental disability, pregnancy, genetic information, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, creed, religion, honorably discharged veteran or military status, citizenship, immigration status, or use of a trained guide dog or service animal in its programs and activities. Learn more at www.clark.edu/nds. If you need an accommodation due to a disability in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Clark College’s Human Resources Office by phone 360-992-2105, or email hr@clark.edu.

About the Columbia Writers Series

speaker at CWS

The Columbia Writers Series has been a part of Clark College since 1988, bringing local, national, and international authors to the college throughout the year. Past and present directors have included Clark English professors Gerard Smith, Jim Finley, Alexis Nelson, and Dawn Knopf.

Past Speakers | English Department

"The Columbia Writers Series is designed to bring writers–whether they are fiction or nonfiction writers, poets, playwrights, or screenwriters–to the college," said Finley. "We not only bring diverse voices to campus, but we recognize the work of Clark's own faculty authors as well."

"Having a strong writers' series enriches the life of any college," said Finley. "Part of the mission of any college is to provide a culture where literature and the arts have a place in our lives–and to recognize that it's not just ornamentation, but that people make their living doing this work."

Writers who have visited Clark College through the series include Ursula Le Guin, Donald Justice, Sherman Alexie, Marvin Bell, William Stafford, Jamaica Kincaid, Gerald Stern, Carolyn Forchè, Natalie Diaz, Karen Russell, Jess Walter, Dana Spiotta, Mitchell Jackson, and many others.