Timothy Liu at St. Bonaventure, Doireann Ní Ghríofa at Canisius, and Deb Olin Unferth at Hallwalls headline this week’s events in Western New York

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 6 p.m.: St Bonaventure University’s Visiting Writers Series presents a reading and conversation with award-winning poet Timothy Liu in the Athletic Hall of Fame in the Reilly Center.

Timothy Liu (Liu Ti Mo) was born in 1965 in San Jose, California, to immigrant parents from Mainland China. He is the author of 12 books of poems, including Of Thee I Sing, selected by Publishers Weekly as a 2004 Book-of-the-Year; Say Goodnight, a 1998 PEN Open Book Margins Award; and Vox Angelica, which won the 1992 Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. He has also edited Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry.

Translated into a dozen languages, Liu’s poems have appeared in such places as Best American Poetry, Bomb, Kenyon Review, The Nation, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, Virginia Quarterly Review and The Yale Review. His journals and papers are archived in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.

He teaches at State University of New York at New Paltz and Vassar College.

The event is supported by the St. Bonaventure’s Department of English, Literary Publishing and Editing Program, and Visiting Scholars Committee

Saint Bonaventure Athletic Hall of Fame, The Reilly Center
3261 West State Road, St. Bonaventure, NY 14778.

Tuesday, Oct. 20, 7 p.m.: The University at Buffalo English Department’s Exhibit X Fiction Series at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center presents an evening with fiction writer Deb Olin Unferth.

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of seven books, including most recently the comic-political, animal rights and agribusiness-based thriller Barn 8 (Graywolf Press, 2020) and the post-apocalyptic, philosophical novel Earth 7 (Graywolf Press, 2026).

In 1987, as a freshman in college studying liberation theology, she dropped out of school and traveled through Central America interviewing and writing about key political and religious figures involved in the civil wars in Guatemala and El Salvador, the Sandinista revolutionary government in Nicaragua, and the Noriega dictatorship in Panama. These travels formed the basis of her memoir Revolution: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War, published by Holt in 2011, which was a finalist for a 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Her stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s, and the New York Times Magazine.

She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim and Creative Capital Foundations, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award.

A professor at the University of Texas in Austin, she teaches for the Michener Center for Writers and the New Writers’ Project.

Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, 341 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo.

Tuesday, October 20, 7 p.m.: Doireann Ní Ghríofa will present the 21st Annual Hassett Reading in the Canisius University Contemporary Writers Series in the Montante Cultural Center on the Canisius University Campus, 2001 Main Street in Buffalo.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is a bilingual Irish poet and essayist, who writes in both English and Irish. She was born in Galway and grew up in County Clare. She describes her work as “devoted to exploring how the past makes itself felt within the present. “

She is the author of seven critically acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. The most recent of these collections are Lies (Dedalus Press, 2018) and To Star the Dark (Dedalus Press, 2021). A trilingual collaborative pamphlet written with Choctaw poet LeAnne Howe Singing, Still – A Libretto for the 1847 Choctaw Gift to the Irish for Famine Relief appeared in 2017. Ní Ghríofa collaborated with the artist Alice Maher on the limited edition book Nine Silences published by Salvage Press in 2018.

Her prose début, A Ghost in the Throat (2021), was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, an NPR Best Book of the Year, and a Globe and Mail Book of the Year. She’s been awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship, the Ostana Prize, and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature.

Her most recent book is Said the Dead (Faber & Faber and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026), in which a chorus of living echoes is summoned from a derelict and abandoned psychiatric hospital and asylum in Cork, Ireland, creating a book that is both lost history and ghost story.

A question and answer session and reception will follow the reading. The event is free and open to the public. To watch a livestream, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane (cochrane@canisius.edu) for a link.

Wednesday, Oct. 21, 6 p.m.: Talking Leaves Books presents Charles J. Whalen, author of Fighting for the American Dream: From Blue-Collar Kid to Maverick Economist, the Battle to Defend Working Families in conversation with Richard Lipsitz at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center.

The conversation will be followed by a signing, and books will be available for purchase from Talking Leaves. This event is free to attend, but purchase of your book from Talking Leaves and donation to Hallwalls are encouraged and deeply appreciated.

Fighting for the American Dream explores the decades-long erosion of the American Dream from the author’s perspective: a working-class kid who became a celebrated economist dedicated to advancing the interests of struggling workers, while also caught in the same currents of job insecurity and downward mobility as the people he aimed to defend.

Worker insecurity, increasing inequality, and downward mobility in our current era contrast sharply with expanding prosperity and opportunity in the first three decades after World War II. What happened? And what can we do to revitalize the American Dream, reduce worker insecurity, and foster broadly shared prosperity?

In this historical account of a protracted and expanding national crisis, intertwined with a personal story about growing up in a work-obsessed family and pursuing a career devoted to addressing that crisis, Charles J. Whalen grapples with the social forces that sever the link between hard work and employment success. He exposes the obstacles that mar the path of many people seeking job opportunities and traces the fading of the American Dream, ultimately encouraging readers to take a fresh look at the current economic situation and championing a more constructive set of public policies to shape the future.

Charles J. Whalen is a research fellow at The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, University at Buffalo. His career spans four decades, including work at the Congressional Budget Office, BusinessWeek, and Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. His work has aimed to advance the interests of workers in economic policymaking, regional development, and labor relations in Western New York and beyond. Whalen’s dad worked as a machinist, his mom is a first-generation Italian American, and he is the first in his family to attend college.

Richard Lipsitz is a career-long advocate for labor, social, and human rights issues. He is president emeritus of the Western New York Area Labor Federation (AFL-CIO), having led that organization between 2011 and 2021. Before that, he worked for International Brotherhood of Teamsters and Service Employees International Union, spending most of his time bargaining and servicing labor agreements; he also directed the Buffalo Labor Studies Program of Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Today, he works tirelessly to protect democracy in America.

Location: Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center Cinema, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo.

Thursday, Aug. 27, 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.: Kenmore Village Improvement Society/Made for Good Open Mic Poetry Night hosted by Geoffrey Gatza and featuring writer Wade Stevenson.

Wade Stevenson was born in New York City in 1945. Educated at St. Paul’s School, he studied in Paris, and has travelled extensively throughout Asia. His first book, ICE CREAM PARLORS IN ASIA, was published in 1969, thanks to John Ashbery. BEDS (McCall Publishing Co.) became a poetry best seller. His memoir ONE TIME IN PARIS and his novel THE ELECTRIC AFFINITIES both received critical acclaim. He has published more than a dozen poetry books, including SONGS OF THE SUN AMOR, LOVE AT THE END, and IN THE COUNTRY OF THE PEREGRINE. His latest book is, THE HUMAN CORE.

An evening of poetry, community, and conversation at KVIS / Made for Good Shop in Kenmore. This month’s audience-chosen optional Haloween-related theme is “Boo!” Whether the theme inspires a poem, a memory, a dream, or something unexpected, all works are welcome. Bring a poem to share or simply come and listen.

Kenmore Village Improvement Society/ Made for Good Shop. Address: 7 Warren Ave. Kenmore, NY 14217.

Thursday, Oct. 22, 7 p.m.: Investigative Post presents The Plague of Online Disinformation: Problems and Solutions with noted media watchdog Steven Brill and Sofia Rubinson, a senior editor at NewsGuard.

Brill is author of The Death of Truth: How Social Media and the Internet Gave Snake Oil Salesmen and Demagogues the Weapons They Needed to Destroy Trust and Polarize the World – And What We Can Do ( Penguin Books, 2024) and co-CEO of NewsGuard, which rates online news sites for accuracy and credibility.

Brill, who has been called an “an expert in fact versus fiction,” will discuss the toxic byproducts of social media, artificial intelligence and online purveyors of disinformation and what news consumers can do about it.

Burchfield Penney Art Center, 1300 Elmwood Ave., Buffalo. $10 admission.
Tickets available online at this link.

Thursday, Oct. 22, 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.: Toni Cade Bambara reading discussion group with Buffalo State University professor Dr. Jennifer Ryan-Bryant at Just Buffalo Literary Center.

In advance of the screening of TCB – THE TONI CADE BAMBARA SCHOOL OF ORGANIZING hosted by the Beyond Boundaries Series at Buffalo State University on Thursday, October 29, Just Buffalo Literary Center will host a discussion group about the work of author, documentary film-maker, and social activist Toni Cade Bambara

facilitated by Buffalo State University English professor Dr. Jennifer Ryan-Bryant.

Just Buffalo Literary Center, 468 Washington St., 2nd floor, Buffalo. Free and open to the public.

Friday, Oct. 23, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.: 4th Friday Poetry Series featuring Buffalo-based poet Connie Joyce. Additional reading slots available. Dog Ears Bookstore & Café, 688 Abbott Rd., Buffalo. $5.

Saturday, Oct. 24, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.: Book launch reading and celebration for Slipstream, Issue #46: Screams & Whispers at The Book Corner in Niagara Falls, NY.

Featured readers for the launch include poets Sean Thomas Dougherty, Matt Zambito, Gunilla Kester, Ed Taylor, Liz Mariani, Teresa Wyatt, and Slipstream co-editors Livio Farallo, and Dan Sicoli.

The Book Corner, 1801 Main Street, Niagara Falls, New York. The event is free and open to the public.

Saturday, Oct. 24, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.: Autumn Eloquence at curated and hosted by poet and playwright Mark C. Lloyd at Painted Love-Art & Wellness Studio in Tonawanda.

14 Featured Poets, no open readers. Admission $5. Adults only.

Featured readers include Melissa Liberatore, Michael Fanelli, Dominique Woods, Janna Willoughby-Lohr aka MC Vendetta, Sinead Tyrone, Bobby C. Neis, Donna Grace, Heather Hermann, Celeste Lawson, Bruce McCausland, Melvin Griffin Jr., Alysia WC aka The Elderberry, and Sandra Davis.

Location: 145 Belmont Ave., Suite 2, Tonawanda, NY 14223.