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Three authors will join the ECC Writers Center for a virtual spring reading series.

The Writers Center at Elgin Community College will host three authors for the Spring 2021 Reading Series. Due to ongoing social distancing practices, the events will take place virtually. All readings begin at 7:30 p.m.

On Thursday, February 18, the spring Reading Series kicks off with Clifford Thompson, author of “What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues (2019),” one of Time magazine’s most anticipated books of the season. His essays and writings on books, film, jazz, and American identity have appeared in The Best American Essays 2018, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Village Voice. He is the author of a novel, “Signifying Nothing,” and a memoir, “Twin of Blackness (2015).” Thompson teaches creative nonfiction writing at the Bennington Writing Seminars, New York University, and Sarah Lawrence College.

Author Kevin Brockmeier joins the series on March 18. Brockmeier is the author of “The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories, the novels “The Illumination,” “The Brief History of the Dead,” and “The Truth About Celia,” and the story collections “Things That Fall from the Sky,” and “The View from the Seventh Layer.” He’s also written the children’s novels “City of Names” and “Grooves: A Kind of Mystery”, and the memoir “A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip” He has published stories in many venues, including The New Yorker, The Georgia Review, and McSweeney’s. He frequently teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

The final spring reader will be poet Valencia Robin on April 22. Her first collection of poems, “Ridiculous Light,” won Persea Books’ Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was named one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of 2019. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the New York Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily, The Boston Review, and Triquarterly. A co-director of the UVA Young Writers Workshop, Robin holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Virginia and an MFA in art and design from the University of Michigan.

All readings are free and open to the public. To join, use the Zoom links below. For the dial-in number or more information on the Writers Center, please contact Rachael Stewart at rstewart@elgin.edu.

Clifford Thompson

February 18, 2021

7:30 p.m.

Join via Zoom

Meeting ID: 983 0478 1842

Passcode: mockpwd

Kevin Brockmeier

March 18, 2021

7:30 p.m.

Join via Zoom

Meeting ID: 926 9835 7614

Passcode: mockpwd