Creative Writing Events
Summer 2025
WEEK 1
May 26 (Mon) - Opening of the Institute event with pizza and prosecco: all Creative Writing teachers
will read one short work each to kick off the summer
6:30-9:00 Secchia Terrace
May 29 (Thu) - Hollie McNish Spoken Word Poet Event
6:30-9:00 Secchia Terrace
WEEK 2 - Writer in residence week
June 3 (Tue) - Nicole Sealey, Writer in Residence event
6:30-9:00 Secchia Terrace
June 4 (Wed) - Master class/Italy Writes online presentation
WEEK 3
June 9 (Mon) - Nicole Sealey event
6:30-9:00 Secchia Terrace
June 12 (Thu) - Round Table with Literary Translators: Enrico Terrinoni (Translator of James Joyce) and Iolanda Plescia (Shakespeare), Moderator: Will Schutt
WEEK 4
June 16 (Mon) - David Starkey reading
6:30-9:00 Secchia Terrace
June 19 (Thu) - Charmaine Wilkerson reading
6:30-9:00 Secchia Terrace
WEEK 5
June 24 (Tue) - Michael Moore translation event with Will Schutt
6:30-9:00 Secchia Terrace
June 26 (Thu) - Closing Event Creative Writing Showcase
6:30-9:00 Secchia Terrace
Bios
Hollie McNish
Hollie McNish is a prize-winning poet and author based between Scotland and England. She was awarded the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for her poetic parenting memoir – Nobody Told Me - of which The Scotsman stated "The World Needs this Book." She has published four further collections of poetry – Papers, Cherry Pie, Plum - and two further collections mixing poetry, fiction and memoir, Slug and Lobster, both of which were a Sunday Times bestseller. She has been translated into French, Spanish, German, and Hungarian and tours in English and French and is currently learning Spanish alongside the release of a new Spanish-English bilingual anthology of her work. She loves to share her work live as well as online and mainly just absolutely loves writing poetry. This is her first time reading in Italy.
Nicole Sealey
Writer in Residence Nicole Sealey was born in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and raised in Apopka, Florida. She is the author of The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, winner of the 2024 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Poetry, and an excerpt from which was awarded the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. She is also the author of Ordinary Beast, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and The Animal After Whom Other Animals Are Named, winner of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. With poet John Murillo, she edited the anthology Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters and Poems, for and about One Mr. Komunyakaa.
David Starkey
David Starkey served as Santa Barbara’s 2009-2011 Poet Laureate. Emeritus Professor and the Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College, he is currently Co-editor of Anacapa Review and The California Review of Books, and Publisher and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press. His most recent books of poetry are You, Caravaggio (Pine Row Press, 2024) and The Moon Shall Not Give Her Light (Vine Leaves Press, 2025). His textbook, Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2022), is in its fourth edition.
Enrico Terrinoni
Enrico Terrinoni holds a PhD in Anglo-Irish Literature and Drama from University College Dublin where he worked on a thesis on Joyce and Neoplatonism under the supervision of Declan Kiberd. He is currently Professor in Residence at the Italian National Academy “Lincei” and Chair of English Literature at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia. He has translated many authors such as Brendan Behan, James Stephens, Alasdair Gray, Muriel Spark, John Burnside, Miguel Syjuco, Francis Bacon, Oscar Wilde, GB Shaw, Bobby Sands, George Orwell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Umberto Eco, Michael D. Higgins, and James Joyce. For his translations, he has won several prizes: the City of Naples Award for Italian Language and Culture in 2012 for Ulysses, the Annibal Caro Prize in 2017 for Finnegans Wake (done in collaboration with Fabio Pedone), The City of Florence – Von Rezzori Prize in 2019 for The Spoon River Anthology, The Capalbio International Prize for his dual language annotated Ulysses.
Charmaine Wilkerson
Charmaine Wilkerson is the author of the novels Black Cake (2022) and Good Dirt (2025). Black Cake was translated into 20 languages and adapted for the screen for Hulu and Disney+. A graduate of Barnard College and Stanford University, Charmaine is a former news and communication professional who also has published award-winning short fiction in various anthologies and magazines. Her writing has been supported by residencies and workshops at Bread Loaf in Sicily, the Vermont Studio Center, and Hedgebrook.