MCC to Host Award-Winning Writer Jennifer De Leon

As part of its Visiting Writers Series, Middlesex Community College will host fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction writer Jennifer De Leon at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 23, in the Bedford Campus Café East. The event is free and open to the public.

Professor Tom Laughlin spearheads the event with the intention of having his students – and other members of the MCC community – hear writers read and then talk about their work.

“I love seeing the excitement in students’ eyes at the readings,” said Professor Laughlin. “It’s been so rewarding to hear after these readings from students – from first-year students to more advanced students in our Creative Writing program – about ways a particular writer engaged, moved and inspired them in their own writing.”

De Leon’s work has been published in several literary journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, The Southeast Review, Ms., Poets & Writers, Guernica and Best Women’s Travel Writing. In 2015, her short story “Home Movie” was selected for Boston’s One City, One Story program, and 30,000 free copies were distributed throughout the Boston area. Her essays have been included in All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World and This is the Place: Women Writing About Home.

She is the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education (University of Nebraska Press, 2014) and was named Artist-in-Residence by the City of Boston for 2016-2017. Awards include the Fourth Genre Michael Steinberg Essay Prize, as well as fellowships and residencies from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and others.

De Leon taught for many years in Boston Public Schools and is currently a professor of English at Framingham State University where she teaches creative writing.

MCC’s Visiting Writers Series is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Office of Student Engagement. For more information, call 978-656-3363 or email StudentEngagement@middlesex.mass.edu.

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