20 creative writing MFA students to read at LitHop

Compiled by Jefferson Beavers, communication specialist, Department of English
Image: From left, MFA students Vanessa Gonzalez, Stefan Leiva, Samina Najmi, and Jacob Simmons.

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More than 100 writers will gather in Fresno’s Tower District on Saturday, Oct. 12, for LitHop 2024, the city’s free literary festival.

The lineup — which includes nearly 50 readings to choose from at 10 different venues between Noon and 5 p.m. — is packed with high school and college student writers, published authors with multiple books, poets laureate, performers reading in multiple languages, and more.

At least half of the writers performing at LitHop have connections to Fresno State as students, faculty, or alumni. This includes 20 current graduate students from the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing across 11 shows:

• 12 to 12:45 p.m. at Hart’s Haven Used Bookstore (950 N. Van Ness Ave.) — Stefan Leiva, Shannon Matalone, H Bryan, and Phoua Lee, as part of the panel “Reality, Reimagined and Reborn.”
• 12 to 12:45 p.m. at Sour Milk (1474 N. Van Ness Ave.) — Jacob Simmons, Soreath Hok, and Sharon K. McClain, as part of the panel “Treasure in the Bones: sourcing light and gloom from the Golden State.”
• 12 to 12:45 p.m. at Tower Yoga Lotus Room (626 E. Olive Ave.) — Samina Najmi, as part of the panel “California Dreaming: Celebrating the Beauty of the Unwanted, the Quotidian, and the Out of Place.”
• 1 to 1:45 p.m. at Sour Milk (1474 N. Van Ness Ave.) — Taylor Seals and Angelina Leaños as part of the panel “Girls! Girls! Girls!”
• 2 to 2:45 p.m. at Splash (644 E. Olive Ave.) — Alison Mandaville, as part of the panel “F#@% yes! Fresno Feminist Flash Forms.”
• 2 to 2:45 p.m. at Sour Milk (1474 N. Van Ness Ave.) — Chloe Abella, as part of the panel “Familial Temporality.”
• 2 to 2:45 p.m. at Tower Yoga Lotus Room (626 E. Olive Ave.) — Samina Najmi and Vanessa Gonzalez, as part of the panel “The Globe Within the Valley.”
• 3 to 3:45 p.m. at Hart’s Haven Used Bookstore (950 N. Van Ness Ave.) — Vanessa Gonzalez, Jacob Simmons, and James T. Morrison, as part of the panel “Body-Mind Synthesis: How Connection Shapes the Person.”
• 3 to 3:45 p.m. at Teazer World Tea Market (645 E. Olive Ave.) — Bo Vang and Chou Xiong, as part of the panel “Diasporas, Horizons, and Auroras (Vol. 1): Healing.”
• 3 to 3:45 p.m. at Tower Yoga Lotus Room (626 E. Olive Ave.) — David R. Carrasco-Gomez, Guadalupe Salgado Partida, Stefan Leiva, and Victoria Monsivaiz, as part of the panel “Together we’ll be a song: introducing four Andrés Montoya scholars.”
• 4 to 4:45 p.m. at Hart’s Haven Used Bookstore (950 N. Van Ness Ave.) — Peter Garza, as part of the panel “One Must Imagine Them Happy.”

This year’s LitHop is a fiscally sponsored project of Arte Américas and the City of Fresno’s Measure P fund. The festival was founded in 2016 by Lee Herrick, a past Fresno poet laureate who teaches at Fresno City College. This year’s lead organizer is the current Fresno poet laureate, Joseph Rios, who teaches creative writing at Stanford University as a Wallace Stegner Fellow.