NORTH NEWTON, Kan. — Bethel College will welcome Kansas Poet Laureate Traci Brimhall and award-winning fiction writer Jennifer Sears to campus in early November as part of its Visiting Writers Series.
The events, hosted by the college's English department, will include public readings, classroom discussions and a writing workshop. Both visits are supported largely through funding from the Tina Block Ediger English Department Endowment.
Brimhall will open the series Monday, Nov. 2, with a convocation titled "Second Chances & Mistakes – What Poetry Teaches Us About Starting Over." The presentation will begin at 11 a.m. in Krehbiel Auditorium at the Luyken Fine Arts Center.
Following the convocation, Brimhall will participate in a discussion of her poetry with students in professor Siobhán Scarry's Introduction to Literature course from noon to 12:50 p.m. The discussion is open to the public, with additional copies of the selected poems available to attendees.
Brimhall, a professor of creative writing at Kansas State University, is the author of five poetry collections, including her most recent, "Love Prodigal," published in 2024.
Her work has appeared in several national publications, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine and Poetry. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets and other organizations.
Brimhall previously visited Bethel College in January for the annual Celebrate Kansas Day! event at Kauffman Museum.
Later in the week, Bethel graduate Jennifer Sears will return to campus to share her fiction writing and work with students.
Sears, a 1991 Bethel graduate who now lives in Brooklyn, New York, will lead a guest workshop for Scarry's fiction-writing class Thursday, Nov. 5.
She will also give a public reading from her 2026 short story collection, "What Mennonite Girls Are Good For," at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, in the Administration Building chapel.
The collection won the 2025 John Simmons Iowa Short Fiction Prize and was published by the University of Iowa Press. It also received the 2024 Northeast Modern Language Association Fiction Book Award.
Sears is a professor of English and creative writing at New York City College of Technology, part of the City University of New York system, where she is the 2026 Scholar on Campus.
She earned her bachelor's degree in English from Bethel before completing a Master of Fine Arts degree at Columbia University.
Her stories and essays have been recognized in the Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories and Best American Nonrequired Reading series. She has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.
Both writers' public appearances are open to the community.
Additional information about Bethel College and its Visiting Writers Series is available at www.bethelks.edu