May 2026
Visiting Writers Series: Novuyo Tshuma and m. mick powell
Wednesday, May 13 | 6pm | SMSU 328
Novuyo Rosa Tshuma is a Kalanga (who occupy land in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and South Africa) and Ndebele (Zimbabwe and South Africa) novelist and short story writer. Her novel Digging Stars (W. W. Norton, 2023) was a National Book Foundation Science + Literature Selection, and her novel House of Stone (W. W. Norton, 2019) won the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award and the 2019 Bulawayo Arts Award for Outstanding Fiction, and was listed for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and other honors. Her novella-and-short story collection, Shadows (Kwela Books, South Africa 2013), won the 2014 Herman Bosman Prize for Literature and was listed for the Etisalat Prize.
A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Tshuma holds a B.S. in Economics & Finance from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa and a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Houston, Texas. Tshuma also serves as a reviewer and editor, having helped pioneer publications such as The Bare Life Review (2017-2021), the only literary journal devoted entirely to work by immigrant and refugee. She now teaches Creative Writing at Reed College and community-led workshops globally.
m. mick powell is a queer Black Cabo Verdean femme, poet, artist, educator, and the author of DEAD GIRL CAMEO (One World/Random House), winner of the 2026 Stonewall Book Award and listed as a Best Book of the Year by the New York Public Library and Debutiful.
mick's work situates Black queer femme existence and experience as rupture, revolution, revelation, and revival. They are the author of the chapbooks threesome in the last Toyota Celica (winner of the Host Publications Chapbook Prize, Fall 2023) and chronicle the body (winner of Yemassee Journal's second Annual Chapbook Contest, 2019). Their poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and a Pushcart Prize and have been published in Split Lip, RHINO, Indiana Review, Muzzle Magazine, and elsewhere.
For their poetry, mick has been awarded a 2026 Yaddo residency, a 2025 Get the Word Out fellowship from Poets & Writers, a 2024 fellowship from Torch Literary Arts, a 2023 Tin House Residency, a research award from the Barnard Library, writing fellowships from the Hurston/Wright Foundation and the Ruth Stone House, and several other recognitions. They currently teach at Bay Path University in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing Program and at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in Crime and Justice Studies.
MFA Graduation Ceremony
Saturday, May 30 | Oregon Contemporary (8371 N Interstate Avenue)
Featuring readings by this year's MFA graduates.
Ongoing
Filament Reading Series
The Filament Reading Series hosts monthly readings in venues throughout Portland. For updates, follow Filament on Instagram.
Portland Lit Mic Series
Jordan Marzka (BFA alum) and Grace Lawrence (BFA alum and current poetry MFA candidate) run the very popular Portland Lit Mic Series, which has become a pillar of the Portland literary scene. For updates, follow Portland Lit Mic on Instagram.