Hope College’s Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series will feature a reading by Hope graduates Shea Tuttle and Kristin Brace on Tuesday, Sept. 28, at 7 p.m. in Winants Auditorium of Graves Hall.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
The event is the annual Tom Andrews Memorial Reading, which is named in honor of a Hope graduate who was a poet. Because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, it is the series’ first in-person installment since February 2020.
Shea Tuttle is the author of “Exactly Who You Are: The Life and Faith of Mister Rogers.” Her biography explores the personal faith and public ministry of Fred Rogers, whose beloved television show has offered comfort and affirmation to generations of children. Tuttle is also the co-editor of “Can I Get a Witness? Thirteen Peacemakers, Community Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice,” and her essays have appeared in Greater Good Magazine, The Toast, and other publications. She earned her M.Div. from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, and she lives with her family in Virginia.
Kristin Brace is a poet and author of two chapbooks and a full-length collection. Her most recent publication, “Toward the Wild Abundance,” was selected for the 2018 Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize. Her work draws inspiration from nature, visual art, family history, dreams, and memory. She lives in West Michigan, and references to the region appear frequently in her work.
Tuttle and Brace graduated from Hope in 2006 and 2007, respectively. The two authors have a strong connection to the college as well as a shared attitude of humility and attention to detail in their writing. Jack Ridl, the namesake of the Visiting Writers Series program, was an influential professor in Tuttle’s education and reviewed Brace’s collection “Toward the Wild Abundance.”
Every year, one reading in the Jack Ridl Visiting Writers Series is done in honor of Tom Andrews (1961-2001), a 1984 Hope graduate who was born and grew up in West Virginia. Following Hope, he earned his MFA at the University of Virginia. In his lifetime, Andrews published three books of poems and a memoir, “Codeine Diary,” about his coming to terms with his hemophilia and his determined refusal to let it circumscribe his life. He also edited two collections of essays, “The Point Where All Things Meet: Essays on Charles Wright” and “On William Stafford: The Worth of Local Things.” In 2002, Oberlin College Press published “Random Symmetries: The Collected Poems of Tom Andrews,” a posthumous volume comprised of two previously published books of poetry, “The Brother’s Country” and “The Hemophiliac’s Motorcycle,” and other works.
More information about the series can be found online at hope.edu/jrvws
Audience members who need assistance to fully enjoy any event at Hope are encouraged to contact the college’s Events and Conferences Office by emailing events@hope.edu or calling 616-395-7222 on weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Updates related to events are posted when available in the individual listings at hope.edu/calendar
Due to the pandemic, Hope is currently requiring that masks be worn by all individuals while indoors on campus unless in their living space or alone in their work space.
Graves Hall is located at 263 College Ave., between 10th and 12th streets.