鶹Ƶ’s Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series will feature two authors with Hope ties, Anna Gazmarian and Heather Sellers, on Monday, Sept. 30, for the 19th annual Tom Andrews Memorial Reading, which is named in honor of a Hope graduate who was a poet.

The public is invited.  Admission is free.

Heather SellersSellers is a former member of the Hope English faculty, and Gazmarian is a Hope graduate. The event will take place on Monday, Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. in Schaap Auditorium of the Jim and Martie Bultman Student Center.  It will include a question-and-answer opportunity with Gazmarian and Sellers, who will also be available to sign copies of their books.

Anna Gazmarian

Anna Gazmarian graduated from Hope in 2014 and holds an MFA in creative writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars. Her essays have been published in The Rumpus, Longreads, The Sun and The Guardian. She lives in Durham, North Carolina. 

“Devout,” her first book, follows Gazmarian's journey as a college student recently diagnosed with bipolar and seeking to find solace and support in the only community, and belief system, she had ever known as a devout Christian of Evangelical faith. At turns harrowing, humorous and humble in her approach, Gazmarian asks: “How can we learn to recover from what seems unrecoverable? How do we live with life-altering events, such as receiving a severe mental health diagnosis? How do we keep going when hope seems lost?” “Devout” proves that, in a society that pits devotion to a higher power against a belief in medicine, strong narratives are needed that show how the pursuit of mental, emotional, psychological and spiritual well-being is all governed by faith; that fear of falling short in our faith makes us human; and that, sometimes, being human is all that God asks of us.

Field Notes from the Flood ZoneHeather Sellers was a member of the Hope faculty from 1995 to 2013, and received the Hope Outstanding Professor Educator (H.O.P.E.) Award from the graduating Class of 2011.  A Florida native, she is the author of four poetry collections, most recently “Field Notes from the Flood Zone,” a book of prose poems sprung from her daily observation journals and haunted by ghosts from the past. As described by the publisher, the collection is “is a double love letter: to a beautiful and fragile landscape, and to the vulnerable young girl who grew up in an extraordinarily difficult home. It is an elegy for the two great shaping forces in a life, heartbreaking family struggle and a collective lost treasure, our stunning, singular, desecrated Florida, and all its remnant beauty.”Devout

Sellers is also the author of two textbooks and two books on craft, as well as a children's book, a collection of short stories, and a memoir, “You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know.” Recent essays have been selected for the “Best American Essays” and awarded a Pushcart Prize; these essays appear in The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, The Sun, and O, the Oprah Magazine. She regularly speaks to audiences about prosopagnosia (face blindness), most recently at NASA. Currently she is director of the undergraduate and MFA creative writing programs at the University of South Florida, where she was awarded a university teaching award and more recently received USF’s Kosove Award for Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching and Service.

The annual Tom Andrews Memorial Reading features writers who graduated from or are associated with 鶹Ƶ.  Andrews (1961-2001) was a 1984 Hope graduate who following his time at Hope earned his MFA at the University of Virginia. In his lifetime, he published three books of poems and a memoir, “Codeine Diary,” about his coming to terms with his hemophilia and his determined refusal to let it circumscribe his life. He also edited two collections of essays, “The Point Where All Things Meet: Essays on Charles Wright” and “On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things.” In 2002, Oberlin College Press published “Random Symmetries: The Collected Poems of Tom Andrews,” a posthumous volume consisting of two previously published books of poetry, “The Brother’s Country” and “The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle,” and other works.

More information about the Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series and about the Sept. 30 event can be found online at hope.edu/jrvws

To inquire about accessibility or if you need accommodations to fully participate in the event, please email accommodations@hope.edu.  Updates related to events are posted when available at hope.edu/calendar in the individual listings.

The Jim and Martie Bultman Student Center is located at 115 E. 12th St., at the center of the Hope campus between College and Columbia avenues along the former 12th Street.  Schaap Auditorium is on the lower level near the building’s southwest corner.