Each year, thanks to the generosity of the ESRR Humanities/Arts Endowment Fund, the University of Utah Creative Writing Program brings in a nationally recognized ESRR Distinguished Visiting Writer to teach graduate and undergraduate workshops and seminars for a half semester or longer. The ESRR Distinguished Visiting Writer also gives a public reading, leads an informal craft conversation with students and the community, and participates in the larger literary culture of the university and Salt Lake.

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Spring 2025 ESRR Distinguished Visiting Writer

Jose-Luis Moctezuma

Jose-Luis Moctezuma is a Xicano poet, essayist, and researcher. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Chicago. His poetry and criticism have been published in Postmodern Culture, Peripheries, Modernism/modernity, Fence, Jacket2, Chicago Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Spring Tlaloc Seance, was published by Projective Industries in January 2016. His first full-length book, Place-Discipline, was published by Omnidawn in October 2018. Place-Discipline was selected by Myung Mi Kim as the winner of the 2017 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Prize. His second book, Black Box Syndrome, was published by Omnidawn in December 2023. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).

 

 

Spring 2024 ESRR Distinguished Visiting Writer

Rick Barot

Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  His fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions and was longlisted for the National Book Award.  His earlier collections include The Darker Fall, Want, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 Grub Street Book Prize, and Chord, all published by Sarabande Books.  Chord received the UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award.  It was also a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize.  His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New Republic,Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker.  He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Stanford University.  He lives in Tacoma, Washington and directs The Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University.

 

 

 

August 22-Oct 11, 2022 ESRR Distinguished Visiting Writer

Douglas Kearney

Douglas Kearney has published seven books, most recently, Sho (Wave Books, 2021), a National Book Award, Pen American, and Minnesota Book Award finalist, and winner of the 2022 Griffin Prize. Buck Studies (Fence Books, 2016), is the winner of the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, the CLMP Firecracker Award for Poetry and silver medalist for the California Book Award (Poetry). His work is widely anthologized, including Best American Poetry (2014, 2015), Best American Experimental Writing (2014), Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Culture and Literature,  What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America, The Future of Black, and Conceptualisms. His work has been exhibited at the American Jazz Museum, Temple Contemporary, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and The Visitor’s Welcome Center (Los Angeles). Kearney received OPERA America’s Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, and has had four operas staged, most recently Sweet Land, which was namedOpera of the Year (2021) by the Music Critics Association of North America. He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly Award for Poetry, residencies/fellowships from Cave Canem, The Rauschenberg Foundation, and others.