Jane Hirshfield is the author of eight collections of poetry, including, most recently, The Beauty (longlisted for the National Book Award ); Come, Thief; After; and Given Sugar, Given Salt. Hirshfield’s other honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets; her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Times Literary Supplement, Harper’s, The Nation, and many other publications. In fall 2004, Hirshfield was awarded the 70th Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by The Academy of American Poets, and in 2012, she was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and later earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. Her work is featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel, and in 2017 Bennett was named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35.” Her debut novel, The Mothers, is set to be adapted to film by Warner Brothers, with Kerry Washington at the helm of the production.
The Zell Visiting Writers Series constitutes the backbone of the HZWP events calendar, bringing the world of contemporary literature to Ann Arbor with visits from working writers that include readings, extensive student-moderated Q&A sessions, individual consultations, craft lectures, and public panel discussions with members of our faculty.