grossmont.edu/frs
Fall Readings Series
The Creative Writing Program's annual Fall Reading Series presents a season of events celebrating literature, showcasing award-winning authors, and honoring the inspiration to write. Free of charge and open to the public, our events are generously underwritten by the СÓÅ´«Ã½ English Department, the GC Academic Affairs Symposium and Lecture Fund, and the Foundation for Grossmont and Cuyamaca Colleges (FGCC) Creative Writing Fund. Please consider visiting the to make a tax deductible contribution that will help us continue bringing literary excellence to our students and community. Thank you!
PARKING & ACCESSIBILITY:
For our off-campus visitors, parking is free in all available spaces designated for use by students; permits are not required. All venues are wheelchair accessible. If you would like an accommodation for ASL interpreter services (on-site or Zoom), to submit a request to the Accessibility Resource Center's Interpreting/RTC Coordinator, Denise Robertson, denise.robertson@gcccd.edu • 619-933-8191 c/text • Video Phone: (619) 567-4269.
2025 FRS Calendar
Click author names for additional bios and event details. Campus information, directions, and maps are available .
See below for info about our 2025 season of events, and download our 2025 FRS Newsletter-Flier:
sam sax poet and writer
Banned Books/Banned Lives Reading
Thursday September 18, 11am Griffin Gate
sam sax photo by Hollis Rafkin.
sam sax, a queer Jewish writer and educator, is the author of Yr Dead, longlisted for The National Book Award, and Pig: Poems, named by New York Magazine and Electric Lit as one of the best books of 2023. They're also the author of Madness, winner of The National Poetry Series, and Bury It, winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Sax is twice
Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Poetry Magazine, Granta,and elsewhere. Having received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts,
The Poetry Foundation, Yaddo, Lambda Lit, MacDowell, they are currently serving as
an ITALIC Lecturer at Stanford University. To learn more, visit .
Acorn Review issue launch reading
Wednesday October 1, 6pm via Zoom
Registration required for attendees in advance of the event.
Zoom link: (or use QR code at right).
Join us for this virtual event celebrating the launch of the latest issue of Acorn Review, СÓÅ´«Ã½â€™s own student-operated literary arts journal. Selected poets and writers featured in the issue will read and talk about their work. Find Acorn submissions info @ .
Natashia Deón novelist
Wednesday October 15, 12:30pm Griffin Gate
Natashia Deón photo by Casey Curry.
A practicing criminal attorney, novelist
Natashia Deón is a two-time nominee for a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature, and the author of two critically acclaimed novels, including The Perishing, and Grace, named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times and awarded Best Debut Novel by the American Library Association’s Black Caucus. A Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award Nominee for Outstanding Fiction and a PEN America Fellow, Deón has also been awarded fellowships and residencies at Yale, Prague’s Creative Writing Program, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Deón is a professor of creative writing at UCLA and Antioch University. Her personal essays have been featured in The New York Times, Harper’s, The Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, American Short Fiction, Buzzfeed, and other places.
For more info, visit .
Chad Stroup musician and horror writer
Tuesday November 18, 12:30pm Griffin Gate
Chad Stroup is the creator of the novels Secrets of the Weird and Sexy Leper, as well as the recent short story collection Teeth Where They Shouldn’t Be. When not writing, Stroup is also the vocalist for the band Icepield, and for Resting
on Pretty, for which he performs as drag alter ego, Jenn X. Stroup received his MFA
in Fiction from San Diego State University. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association
and the San Diego Horror Professionals. For more info, visit
Stroup is the featured presenter in this year's Lester Bangs Memorial Reading commemorating El Cajon native and СÓÅ´«Ã½ alumnus who became one of the most infamous rock critics in history. Having worked for Rolling Stone and Creem, Bangs popularized terms such as "punk rock" and "heavy metal." In 2009, Grossmont College officially honored Bangs’s international celebrity status by dedicating to him a bronze "Walk of Fame" plaque, located in the Main Quad in front of the Tech Mall.
New Voices student literary reading
Monday December 8, 6pm Griffin Gate
The finale of the 2025 FRS is a popular showcase of writing talent curated from this semester’s workshops. Students are selected by creative writing instructors to perform original works of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama, and hybrid forms.