Axton Reading Series | Fall 2026

Lesley Jenike | September 10–11

Creative nonfiction writer and poet Lesley Jenike will read at 6 p.m. on Sept. 10 in the Bingham Poetry Room in the Ekstrom Library, and she will lead a generative writing session on Sept. 11 from 10 a.m. to noon, followed by a closing reception (new this year!) from noon to 1 p.m. – an opportunity for casual conversation with our visiting writer and fellow creative writing community members. Friday’s events will take place in Miller Information Technology Center 201.

Lesley Jenike is the author of the essay collection City of Toys as well as full-length poetry collections Ghost of Fashion (CW Books) and Holy Island (Gold Wake), and chapbooks How We Came Ashore (Dancing Girl Press) and Punctum : (Kent State University Press, 2017). Her poems and essays have appeared or will appear soon in Poetry, The Kenyon Review, At Length, NELLE, phoebe, The Bennington Review, The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, Rattle, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Blackbird, Passages North, and many other journals. She’s the recipient of awards, fellowships, and scholarships from the Ohio Arts Council, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Academy of American Poets. She was awarded an M.F.A. from The Ohio State University in 2003 and a Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati in 2008. She’s currently a regular blogger for Ploughshares as well as Associate Professor of Writing, Literature, and Philosophy at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Columbus, Ohio, where she lives with her husband and two children.

Jenny Offill | October 22–23

Novelist Jenny Offill will read at 6 p.m. on Oct. 22 in the Chao Auditorium in the Ekstrom Library and lead a fiction workshop on Oct. 23 from 10 a.m. to noon, followed by a closing reception from noon to 1 p.m. Friday’s events will take place in Miller Information Technology Center 201.

Jenny Offill is an acclaimed fiction writer whose debut novel, Last Things (1999), was named a New York Times Notable Book and finalist for the LA Times First Book Award. The New York Times named her second novel, Dept. of Speculation, one of the 10 Best Books of 2014. Weather: A Novel was published in 2020 and lauded by the Boston Globe as “tiny in size but immense in scope, radically disorienting yet reassuringly humane, strikingly eccentric and completely irresistible.” Her critical work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review and Slate. She is coeditor, with Elissa Schappell, of the anthologies Money Changes Everything and The Friend Who Got Away; author of a number of children’s books; and subject of a February 2020 feature in the New York Times Magazine, “How to Write Fiction When the Planet Is Falling Apart.” Honors include a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, Guggenheim Fellowship, New York Film Academy Fellowship in Fiction, and resident fellowships at MacDowell, Slovenian PEN Centre, and Yaddo. Offill previously taught in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Syracuse University, Columbia University, and Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina; and served as Visiting Writer at Syracuse University, Bard, and Sarah Lawrence College, and as Writer in Residence at Vassar College and Pratt University.

Adam O. Davis | November 12–13

Poet (and Miracle Monocle contributor) Adam O. Davis will read at 6 p.m. on Nov. 12 in the Bingham Poetry Room in the Ekstrom Library, and he will lead a poetry workshop on Nov. 13 from 10 a.m. to noon, followed by a closing reception from noon to 1 p.m. Friday’s events will take place in Miller Information Technology Center 201.

Adam O. Davis is the author of Pyrrhic Symphony (University of Nebraska Press, 2026), winner of the Raz/Shumaker Book Prize from Prairie Schooner, and index of haunted houses (Sarabande Books, 2020), winner of the Kathryn A. Morton Poetry Prize and finalist for the Big Other Book Award for Poetry. The recipient of the 2022 Poetry International Prize and the 2016 George Bogin Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, he has received grants and fellowships from The Bishop’s School, Columbia University, the New Literary Project, the Prague Summer Program for Writers, and Vermont Studio Center. He is also, with Colin Waters, the co-creator and host of the Poetry Goes to the Movies podcast. His work has appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including The Believer, The Best American Poetry, Boston Review, The Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, The Paris Review, The Poetry Review, The Southern Review, West Branch, and ZYZZYVA. Davis was born in Tucson, Arizona and raised in Scotland, Utah, France, New Jersey, and California. He holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Riverside, and an M.F.A. in Poetry from Columbia University. He currently teaches English at The Bishop’s School in San Diego, California.

All Axton events (readings, workshops/generative writing sessions, and closing receptions) are open to the public.

The Axton Reading Series is made possible with the support of Anne and William Axton, who endowed the series in 1998.