The Converse Creative and Professional Writing program will host award-winning poet and essayist Richard Tillinghast on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, at 8:00 PM in Zimmerli Common Room. Copies of Tillinghast’s newest award-winning books will be available for purchase at the reading. The event is free and open to the public.
Richard Tillinghast’s recent book, Blue If Only I Could Tell You, won the 2022 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. His newest book, Night Train to Memphis, is his 14th poetry collection, and Tillinghast is also the author of five books of creative nonfiction. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Paris Review, The New Republic, Best American Poetry and elsewhere. He is recipient of the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship as well as grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Tillinghast has taught writing and literature at Harvard University, Sewanee University, UC Berkley, and the University of Michigan. He currently lives in Hawaii and writes full time.
Tillinghast is a visiting writer for Converse’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing.
For additional information, contact Prof. Rick Mulkey at rick.mulkey@converse.edu
