Released: July 10, 2025
Authors include Chip Livingston, Rowena Alegría and James Thomas Stevens. Sessions begin Aug. 20
Pre-register at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WriGenFall2025
SANTA FE, NM—Santa Fe Community College’s Library and Creative Writing program present the free online Fall 2025 Writing Generation (Wri-Gen) Series beginning Aug. 20 led by esteemed authors. Each author will read at an introductory session. In a follow-up Zoom meeting the author will engage the participants in a writing exercise/creative session. Attendees can go to any of the sessions by registering just once at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WriGenFall2025. The sessions begin at 6 p.m. on Wednesdays and will feature these writers: Chip Livingston (Aug. 20 reading; Aug. 27 creative session), Rowena Alegría (Sept. 17 reading; Sept. 24 creative session) and James Thomas Stevens (Oct. 22 reading; Oct. 29 creative session).
At the end of the semester participants will have an opportunity to share their work during the final Zoom session on November 19. Registrants will receive a Zoom link via email the morning of each event.
SFCC Library Director Valerie Nye and SFCC professor of English and Creative Writing Austin Eichelberger are coordinating the free Writing Generation Series, which began in Spring 2024.
Nye said, “This free online series is open to the public and consists of two types of events: readings by writers with a New Mexico connection and creative sessions. Attendees will be given time to write as they engage in a creative discussion and/or respond to writing prompts during the creative sessions. Each semester concludes with an online reading for our attendees, giving them the chance to share the work they created with the guest authors during the series.”
Eichelberger added, “These events are about giving people space and inspiration to write. We’re excited to offer this series that gives the online community an opportunity to engage with creative writers while developing their own voices.”
The public is welcome to attend one or all sessions. Since the Wri-Gen series began more than 100 people have attended the free online sessions.
Chip Livingston
Chip Livingston
- 6 p.m. Aug. 20 reading
- 6 p.m. Aug. 27 creative session
Bio: Chip Livingston is the mixed-blood Creek author of six books: three collections of poetry, a novel, a nonfiction children’s book, and a story and essay collection. He’s also the editor of Love, Loosha: The Letters of Lucia Berlin and Kenward Elmslie. His writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Poem-A-Day, and other literary journals. Livingston teaches in the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Chip Livingston’s description of his writing: Livingston writes from the margins, mixing genres and forms with an aim to combine the best elements of poetry and prose to surprising results.
Chip Livingston’s creative session: Livingston will provide prompts and examples applicable to all genres (or mixing genres) in a creative session intended to provoke new approaches to lyric and narrative storytelling.
Rowena Alegría
Rowena Alegría
- 6 p.m. Sept. 17 reading
- 6 p.m. Sept. 24 creative session
Bio: Rowena Alegría served as Chief Storyteller for the City & County of Denver, founder and director of the Denver Office of Storytelling, from 2019 to 2024. The world’s only storytelling, cultural preservation and narrative change project created nine documentary films and about a hundred short films, made about four million impressions on social media and hosted more than seventy community events in which story opened into conversations about our collective history, challenges and triumphs.
Under Alegría’s leadership, the team brought resident voices and histories out of the shadows and onto big and little screens for more than half million people. The work was selected for five film festivals, nominated for six Heartland Emmy Awards and honored with some 27 different awards, including History Colorado’s Josephine H. Miles Award for a major contribution to state history.
Alegría has spoken around the world about the power of storytelling, including before the National Civic League, Georgetown University Center for Social Impact, American Planning Association, Smart Cities Connect, Center for Public Safety Excellence, and at a one-day symposium inspired by the Office of Storytelling and organized by Sorbonne University. She was Naropa University’s 2024 Cobb Peace Lecturer and among the urban thought leaders at the first Bruner Debates on Urban Excellence. She once moderated an evening with the amazing Rita Moreno.
Alegría was the 2021 Ricardo Salinas Scholar in Fiction at Aspen Words and has been the recipient of art-making fellowships and residencies. She earned an MFA in Fiction from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is a member of Sandra Cisneros’ Macondo Writers Workshop. Her creative writing has appeared in publications including The Rumpus, the Mississippi Review, the Hennepin Review and a 2023 anthology titled We Are the West. A filmmaker, career journalist, communications executive and speech writer, she is writing a novel that plays with form and the history of the Southwest. She was adopted and raised in Denver. For more, see http://www.RowenaAlegria.com
Rowena Alegría Artist Statement: Adopted at birth, inheritance and identity fascinate me. I knew the woman who gave me light only in the sharing of fluids and nutrients. For nine months, I experienced her tears, her rabia, her indecision. I heard her words in languages I would learn long afterward. I imagine her intimations wait like timed bombs in my consciousness and go off as whispered intuition. From her, I inherited a love of learning and a passion for words and justice. Surrendered at birth, I marvel at how I know so little of her in artifact or experience, as she walked on before my search, but how so much of her – learned from her poems and dissertation, from her survivors, those who loved her but didn’t know her well enough to know I existed – survives in my genes.
My work in progress, a novel titled “500 Springs,” takes a particular interest in these ideas coupled with the legacy of colonialism on the indigenous and mestizo peoples of what is now Mexico and the southwestern United States, which includes my home state of Colorado. The novel explores the potential of souls carrying over generations the unresolved pain of the past as well as unfulfilled love and promises.
James Thomas Stevens
James Thomas Stevens
- 6 p.m. Oct. 22 reading
- 6 p.m. Oct. 29 creative session
Bio: James Thomas Stevens (Akwesasne Mohawk) was born in Niagara Falls, New York and grew up between Six Nations Reserve in Ontario (the birthplace of his grandfather), the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation in upstate New York (birthplace of his grandmother), and the Tuscarora Reservation in western New York (where his grandparents settled). He attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodies Poetics, and Brown University’s graduate C.W. program. Stevens is the author of eight books of poetry, including, Combing the Snakes from His Hair, Mohawk/Samoa: Transmigrations, A Bridge Dead in the Water, The Mutual Life, Bulle/Chimere, and DisOrient, and The Golden Book. He is a 2000 Whiting Award recipient and a 2005 finalist for the National Poetry Series Award. He teaches in IAIA’s undergraduate and graduate Creative Writing Programs. He teaches Poetry, Creative nonfiction, Native American literature, and literary world survey courses. He lives in Cañoncito, New Mexico.
Participant Reading
- 6 p.m. Nov. 19 participant reading
The Participant Reading will allow those who’ve attended the series to share some of their personal writing inspired by the series.
For additional information about the series, please contact SFCC Library Director Valerie Nye via email at valerie.nye@sfcc.edu or call 505-428-1506. For more information about SFCC’s Creative Writing program visit https://www.sfcc.edu/programs/creative-writing/.
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