Cole Swensen is the author of seventeen collections of poetry, most recently On Walking On (Nightboat, 2017), Gave (Omnidawn, 2017), and Landscapes on a Train (Nightboat 2015), and a volume of critical essays. Her poetic collections turn around specific research projects, including ones on public parks, visual art, illuminated manuscripts, and ghosts. Her work has won the National Poetry Series, the Iowa Poetry Prize, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, and the PEN USA Award in Literary Translation. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she is the co-editor of the Norton anthology American Hybrid and the founding editor of La Presse Poetry (www.lapressepoetry.com). She teaches at Brown University and her website is https://www.coleswensen.com.

The Visiting Writer Series, co-presented with University Libraries, welcomes six writers each semester—two each in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Participating writers meet with MFA students in small afternoon workshops and then present an evening reading, open to the general public. All readings take place in the Fenwick Library Main Reading Room, 2001 Fenwick, on Mason’s Fairfax Campus.