Events

Learn more about the Genetic Counseling Master's degree program at Sarah Lawrence College. Established in 1969, the program was the first of its kind in the United States. It remains the largest graduate program in genetic counseling in the world. RSVP here.

There are many good poems. There are, however, very few perfect poems. While we understand perfection is subjective, why is Brigit Pegeen Kelly’s Song a perfect poem among poets? In this craft talk, Nicole Sealey examines Song, its leaps, sounds, images, digressions, syntax, and embellishments. Understanding the forces behind this beloved poem can give us strategies for writing our very own perfect poem.

Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida. She is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. An excerpt from her forthcoming collection, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her honors include a 2023-2024 Cullman Center Fellowship from the New York Public Library, a Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, and fellowships from CantoMundo, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies including The New Yorker, Poetry London, and The Best American Poetry (2018 and 2021). She was the Executive Director at Cave Canem Foundation from 2017-2019. She is a visiting professor at Boston University and teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University.

This event is colloquium credit eligible.

Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I. and raised in Apopka, Florida. She is the author of Ordinary Beast, finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Open Book Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. An excerpt from her forthcoming collection, The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. Her honors include a 2023-2024 Cullman Center Fellowship from the New York Public Library, a Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy in Rome, a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from The American Poetry Review, and fellowships from CantoMundo, Cave Canem, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her work has appeared in various journals and anthologies including The New Yorker, Poetry London, and The Best American Poetry (2018 and 2021). She was the Executive Director at Cave Canem Foundation from 2017-2019. She is a visiting professor at Boston University and teaches in the MFA Writers Workshop in Paris program at New York University.

This event is colloquium credit eligible.

Sarah Lawrence College's Office of Undergraduate Admissions will host a college fair for local students and their families from 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm on Wednesday, September 27 in the Barbara Walters Campus Center.  Come meet representatives from numerous colleges and discuss college options.

Our Community Reading series returns. Writing Institute students and alumni are welcome to sign up to read for 3 to 4 minutes (or 650 words). All are welcome at this virtual open mic. Readers will be notified at least one week before the event. Come out to share your writing or cheer on your fellow writers! RSVP HERE. 

Sarah Lawrence College MFA Writing Faculty member Ben Purkert reads from his recently published novel The Men Can’t Be Saved. Book sales and signing to follow.

Ben Purkert is a poet and novelist. His debut novel, The Men Can't Be Saved, came out in August 2023 from Overlook/Abrams. He is also the author of the poetry collection For the Love of Endings (Four Way Books, 2018), named one of Adroit's Best Poetry Collections of the Year. His writing appears in The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Slate, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. A former Guernica editor, he is the founder of Back Draft, an interview series focused on revision and the creative process. He holds degrees from Harvard and NYU, and currently lives in Jersey City.

This event is colloquium credit eligible.

Melanie Mitchell is a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Her current research focuses on conceptual abstraction and analogy-making in humans and AI systems. Melanie is the author or editor of six books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems. Her book Complexity: A Guided Tour (Oxford University Press) won the 2010 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book Award and was named by Amazon.com as one of the 10 best science books of 2009. Her latest book, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), has been shortlisted for the 2023 Cosmos Prize for Scientific Writing. This event is open to the entire Sarah Lawrence community and the public.

REGISTER HERE.