Award-winning novelist and poet Patrick Coleman will visit Pullman this Feb. 4–6 as a guest of the WSU Visiting Writer series. Coleman is an artist and curator as well as a writer and he works as the assistant director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at UC San Diego.
Coleman’s first novel, The Churchgoer, in the California noir tradition, was released by Harper Perennial in 2019. Coleman will read from The Churchgoer and answer questions at the Neill Public Library on Feb. 4 at 5:30 p.m., an event that is free and open to the public.
Coleman’s debut collection of poems, Fire Season, won the 2015 Berkshire Prize and was released by Tupelo Press in 2018. Fire Season was written after the birth of his first child by speaking aloud into a digital audio recorder on the long commute between the art museum where he worked and his home in a rural neighborhood that burned in the Witch Creek Fire of 2007. Each poem in the book is paired with a reproduction of a relevant work of art from Coleman’s time working at the San Diego Museum of Art.
Coleman will lead a community workshop at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on Feb. 5 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. This will be a generative writing workshop based on works currently exhibited in the museum. The event is free and open to the public (no registration or reservation required).
Coleman will read from his book of poetry, Fire Season, and answer questions at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on Feb. 6 from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., an event that is free and open to the public.
The WSU Visiting Writer Series brings noted poets and writers of fiction and nonfiction to campus for creative readings, class visits, workshops, and collaborative exchanges across intellectual and artistic disciplines. Coleman’s visit to WSU is co‑sponsored by ASWSU, the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, and the Common Reading Program. A Common Reading stamp will be available.
Learn more about the Visiting Writer Series at WSU.
