The Warren County Community College Visiting Authors Series leads off its new season on Thursday, Sept. 29, with a reading by poets Nicole Cooley and Christopher Salerno, recipients of Distinguished Artist Fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

The reading, beginning at 7:30 p.m. in room 123A, is free and open to the public. Books will be available for purchase at the reading.

Poet Nicole Cooley

Cooley is the author of five books, most recently Breach (LSU Press 2010) and Milk Dress (Alice James Books 2010). She has also published two other collections of poems and a novel. She directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College-CUNY. She lives outside of New York City with her husband and two daughters.

Salerno is the editor of Saturnalia Books and author of four poetry collections. His most recent book, Sun & Urn, was selected by Thomas Lux for the Georgia Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in 2017 from University of Georgia Press. Previous books include ATM (Georgetown Review Poetry Prize, 2014), Minimum Heroic (Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, 2010), and Whirligig (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006). He is an Associate Professor of English at William Paterson University.

The Visiting Authors Series is supported by a grant from the Warren County Cultural and Heritage Commission. All facilities comply with ADA regulations and are fully accessible. This event is held in conjunction with The Writers Theatre of New Jersey, which helps coordinate presentations by NJSCA Distinguished Artist Fellowship recipients across the state. Sign language interpreters are available with two weeks’ notice.

Upcoming guest author visits to Warren County Community College include Paul Lisicky, recipient of a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, on Oct. 26; Gregory Pardlo, recipient of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, on Dec. 7; and Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love, April 19, 2017.

Warren County Community College offers students the option of earning an Associate of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, the first and only degree of its kind in New Jersey and one of only five in the nation to be recognized as a viable A.F.A. by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).  For more information about the Visiting Authors Series or the A.F.A. in Creative Writing, please visit www.warren.edu or call 908-835-WCCC.