Annual Reading Series Features Author Sejal Shah

This fall’s Cavanaugh Reading Series, hosted by the St. John Fisher College English Department, will feature author Sejal Shah.

The reading, which will be held via Zoom and livestreamed to the English Department’s Facebook page, will take place at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 5.

Guests can register in advance for Shah’s reading, which is free and open to the public, or join via Zoom using the password “shahreads.”

The author of the debut essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance (University of Georgia Press, 2020), Shah’s stories and essays have appeared in Brevity, Conjunctions, Guernica, the Kenyon Review Online, Literary Hub, Longreads, and The Rumpus. The recipient of a 2018 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in fiction, she recently completed a story collection and is at work on a memoir about mental health. Shah teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.

Prior to her public reading, Shah will host a craft talk for the campus community at 3 p.m., also via Zoom. There, she will share creative writing techniques and lead participants through a guided writing exercise. Students, faculty, and staff can join the Zoom talk using the password “shahcraft.”

The annual reading series was named in honor of the English Department’s friend and former colleague, Fr. John R. Cavanaugh. At the time of his passing in 2007, Fr. Cavanaugh had been associated with the College for more than 50 years, including more than 30 as one of the stalwarts of the English Department. He retired from active teaching in 1994, but never from his service to the College. Devoted to English Renaissance literature and Irish studies of all kinds, along with good conversation, he was generous with his time and had a good sense of humor. Fr. Cavanaugh was an exacting and encouraging teacher whom students admired and remembered.