VOICES History
The VOICES Reading Series has been dedicated for nearly forty years to bringing emerging and established writers from across the nation to read for the St. Mary’s community. These readings typically take place on a monthly basis in the Daugherty-Palmer Commons (DPC) on Thursday nights at 7:30 and are free and open to the public. Each evening has a simple format: the invited poet or prose writer is introduced by a St. Mary’s faculty member and reads for about 30 minutes. At the receptions that follow each reading, audience members have a chance to mingle with the visiting writer who has just read aloud from his or her work. Over the years, St. Mary’s has been honored to hear the voices of poets and prose writers such as Mark Doty, Sharon Olds, Toni Morrison, and Lucille Clifton—and many more.
When VOICES series founder Michael Glaser arrived in 1970, his personal and professional mission was to expand the role of poetry on campus and to provide students with exposure to living, breathing poetry. By 1976, Glaser and Judith Hall began bringing poets to St. Mary’s for an intensive two-week summer program run on a shoestring budget called “The Festival of Poets and Poetry.”
In the early eighties, Michael Glaser asked poet Lucille Clifton, Maryland’s Poet Laureate from 1979-1985, to visit St. Mary’s for the first time. Knowing that she loved Maryland, Michael Glaser suggested that Clifton become a repeat visitor to the College—and she did. For close to two decades, Clifton taught at St. Mary’s and mentored student poets here.
Clifton’s presence also became the inspiration for the newly emerging VOICES program. While the summertime Festival of Poets and Poetry had been gaining reputation and momentum, the organizers wanted fall and spring semester students to have exposure to the world of contemporary literature that the summer festival brought to campus. The reading series was called “VOICES” because of Clifton’s insistence that the emphasis of the series should be on hearing voices of justice, fairness, and human compassion. After all, the VOICES series began, in the words of Michael Glaser, “not because poetry matters, but because what poetry is about matters.”
This effort to bring the world of contemporary writing to the St. Mary’s community has been very successful. In the Summer 2005 edition of The Mulberry Tree, Wrenn Heisler ’99 writes, “I knew I wanted to be an English major when I heard Robert Hass read. I knew I wanted to be passionate and precise about life and my family when I heard Lucille Clifton read. I knew I was doing the right thing in being an environmentalist when I heard W.S. Merwin read. I knew I wanted to teach when I took my first class with Michael Glaser. I knew I had never looked into eyes as intense as those of Adrienne Rich when I met her at St. Mary’s.”
“I met her,” Heisler continues. “There I was—a measly little English major at St. Mary’s, and I was taking dinner with Adrienne Rich, one of the most illuminating poets of our time.” In fact, all of the writers Heisler mentions are luminaries. Over the past thirty years, the collection of individuals who have come to read at St. Mary’s is astonishing.
Poets such as Robert Bly, Mary Oliver, Amiri Baraka, Toi Derricotte, and Li-Young Lee have been just a few of the many inspirational voices heard by the St. Mary’s community through the VOICES series. In 2008, Glaser turned the directorship over to Karen Leona Anderson, who has maintained its focus on bringing quality writing and writers to campus along with an emphasis on diversity, collaboration, and aesthetic breadth.
In addition to individual readings, the VOICES Reading Series has also broadened to include a variety of reading formats linking readers to writers. St. Mary’s alumni, such as Tony Quick and Michelle Johnson, have read from their work; seniors have participated in Senior Invitational Readings; a Women Writers Reading group of female voices has been a regular feature of the Series; and in recent years, the Writer’s Harvest—a group reading led by English faculty member Jennifer Cognard-Black—has raised money to fight hunger. The VOICES series also works each year with the Environmental Studies department, International Languages and Cultures, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies to host cross-disciplinary readings.
Those who have attended the readings frequently cite them as formative events in their lives as poets and writers. “That one reading changed my life,” is a common refrain from alumni such as Randy Bridgeman, who has continued to write and publish poetry since graduation. Many others have also gone on to become poets, or have found themselves teaching subjects such as art, poetry, and creative writing. Others remember the ideas behind the work, and have found their passions piqued by the subject matter of an evening gathering. For many of those who attended St. Mary’s, VOICES serves to inspire a lifelong passion for reading and writing.
VOICES Fall Schedule 2026
Thursday, September 17: Poet and SMCM Alumn Joe Hall, 7:30 PM, Daugherty Palmer Commons; introduced by Professor Jeff Coleman
Joe Hall is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Buffalo Free Rapid Transit (2026) and Fugue and Strike (2023). With Chad Hardy, he co-authored The Container Store Vols I & II (2012). With Cheryl Quimba, he co-authored the chapbook May I Softly Walk (2014). Hall has performed and delivered talks nationally at universities, living rooms, squats, and/or rivers in most of the 50 states as well as Canada and Washington, DC. He participates in Hostile Books, a publishing collective dedicated to radical materiality, with Ryan Kaveh Sheldon and Angela Veronica Wong, Hall is currently an Assistant Professor at St. Bonaventure University. He has taught community based creative writing workshops through the Worker Center in Buffalo and Just Buffalo Literary Center.
Thursday October 15: Novelist and SMCM Professor Jerry Gabriel and Memoirist Molly McCloy, 7:30 PM, Daugherty Palmer Commons
Jerry Gabriel (SMCM faculty)
Jerry Gabriel’s first novel, Deserters, was published in May 2026 (Acre Books). He is the author of two collections of stories, The Let Go (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2015) and Drowned Boy (Sarabande, 2010), which won the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, was a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” pick, and was awarded the 2011 Towson Prize for Literature. His stories have appeared in One Story, Epoch, Fiction, The Missouri Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among other publications. He has received grants and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2004), the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference (2011), and the National Endowment for the Arts (2016). He lives in Maryland with his family and teaches writing at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
Molly McCloy is a four-time Moth StorySLAM winner whose memoir Nine Grudges: The Spiteful Origins of the Happiest Dyke on Earth won the 2023 Quill Prose Award from Red Hen Press as well as the Book Pipeline Nonfiction Prize. She holds an M.F.A. in Nonfiction from The New School, and she has facilitated storytelling workshops for Pima Community College, Quest Storytelling, the University of Arizona’s The Agnese Nelms Haury Program in Environmental and Social Justice, and Auto Entry and CPA Academy.
She has performed stories for Bawdy and RADAR in San Francisco, and at Dixon Place in New York City, The Scottsdale Center for the Arts, and The Arizona Biltmore. Her work has been featured in O magazine, excerpted in the Blue Mesa Review and Foglifter, and broadcast on The Best of Risk! podcast. She currently lives in Tucson with her wife Rebecca and teaches writing for the awesome students of Pima Community College.
Thursday, November 12: Performance Poet and Organizer CJ Suitt (in collaboration with ENST), 7:30 PM, Daugherty Palmer Commons; introduced by Professor Parisa Rinaldi
CJ Suitt (he/him or they/them) is a performance poet, arts educator, community organizer, and Restorative Justice practitioner from Chapel Hill, NC. His work lives at the intersection of art, healing, and justice, rooted in a deep belief that storytelling can connect people across difference and create pathways toward collective liberation. As the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Chapel Hill, CJ uses poetry as a tool for reflection, resistance, and community-building. He has co-directed and performed in theatrical productions, shared stages at national music festivals, and brought his voice to classrooms, prisons, and public forums alike. His practice as a restorative justice advocate has led him to work with youth awaiting trial, incarcerated elders, and young men redefining masculinity in their schools and communities. Through collaborations with organizations like Transplanting Traditions, Benevolence Farm, and Growing Change, he explores how food, land, and story intertwine in the work of justice.CJ is committed to speaking truth to power and to build bridges where others see barriers. His values—truth, care, and connection—guide every space he enters.
Thursday, December 3: Storyteller Adrian Gaston Garcia (in collaboration with ILC), 7:30 PM, Daugherty Palmer Commons; introduced by Professor José Ballesteros
Adrian Gaston Garcia (aka AGG) is a queer Latine storyteller whose mission is to share narratives that build community. He hails from the Windy City and has been in the district for the past 15 years. Adrian fuels his creativity via the performing arts, specifically theater and spoken word poetry. His work is primarily based on his experiences and the intersectionality of his identities. Adrian’s poetry has been featured at a variety of venues and shows, including the American Poetry Museum, the DC Latino Book Festival, DC Pride Poems, World Poetry Festival, and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company. Adrian is the co-host and producer of Los Bookis Podcast, a podcast for queer Latine bookworms who love queer Latine stories. He is also the founder and organizer of Tintas DC – a Latine writers group in the DC Metro Area. Adrian was part of the 2025 year’s Pride Poet in Residence at the Arts Club of Washington.
About
The VOICES Reading Series, established by poets Lucille Clifton and Michael Glaser over 30 years ago, features poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers and is intended to bring accomplished writers to the campus to interact with students and faculty. Invited writers read their works throughout the semester on Thursday evenings at 8:15 P.M at Daugherty-Palmer Commons, and all readings are free and open to the public. Once or twice a month, authors give a short reading and then respond during a brief question and answer period. Each reading is followed by a reception, where students and faculty can mingle with the author and other interested writers and readers. The author’s book(s) are also sold during the reception and can be signed by the author. Luminaries such as Mark Doty, Elizabeth Alexander, Toni Morrison, and Naomi Shihab Nye have read in the series.
Information on events are posted throughout campus, and emails are sent out near the date of the readings; please contact the director, Karen Leona Anderson (klanderson@smcm.edu) if you would like to be added to these notifications. In addition, all the events and information on the authors can be found at our Facebook page: Creative Writing Resources at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
