This series, sponsored by the College, brings emerging writers to campus to read with a University of Chicago student. The faculty chooses writers who have published one or two books. We have separate events for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. These events are particularly special for our Program because they provide opportunities for our students to showcase their work alongside emerging writers.
We administer a call for submissions from students in the College, who must submit 3–5 pages of their original work in an anonymous document. The visiting writer selects a winner and that student reads alongside them, and joins the faculty and writer for a celebratory dinner following the event. The New Voices Series fosters excitement and support among the students and provides a moment for our faculty to celebrate their students' work.
Kate Folk is the author of Out There (Random House '22), a finalist for the California Book Award in First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Granta, One Story, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and Zyzzyva, among others. A 2019-2021 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University, she's also received support from MacDowell, Willapa Bay AiR, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She currently teaches in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco, and is developing a television show based on the title story from her collection. Her debut novel will be published by Random House in 2025.
Kate Folk has selected Seraphina Halpern to read alongside her at New Voices in Fiction!
Seraphina is a current fourth-year student at UChicago majoring in Anthropology and Creative Writing. She has been Student Director of the Phoenix Outdoors Program, and she is currently working on a BA Thesis in Anthropology on Canadian lobster fishing. She hopes to work in nonfiction media production, though right now, she has a lot to say about learning to swim at the Ratner Athletics Center.