Visiting Faculty Zoe Tuck and Devon Walker-Figueroa ’15 Read at Literature Evening

On Wednesday September 18th, two new visiting faculty in Literature for the 2024–2025 academic year, Zoe Tuck and Devon Walker-Figueroa ‘15, read their recent work in Tishman Lecture Hall. The readings were followed by a short Q&A and book signing. The event was hosted by the literature department at Bennington College. As always, the event was also open to the public.

Zoe Tuck is the author of Bedroom Vowel (BUNNY Presse, 2023) and Terror Matrix (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2014), as well as the chapbooks The Book of Bella (Doublecross Press), bound in a dos-a-dos edition with Emily Hunerwadel’s Peach Woman, and Vape Cloud of Unknowing (Belladonna* Collaborative). A member of Belladonna* Collaborative and Futurepoem, she also co-edits Hot Pink Magazine with Emily Bark Brown. She teaches creative writing and literature classes through Threshold Academy and elsewhere.

Devon Walker-Figueroa’s debut poetry collection Philomath (Milkweed Editions, 2021) won the National Poetry Series and the Levis Reading Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. Her second poetry collection, Lazarus Species, is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in 2025. She was a 2022-2023 Amy Lowell Traveling Scholar. Her work can be found in The Nation, POETRY, American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, and elsewhere

At the reading, an enthusiastic audience of Bennington College students, faculty, and guests in Tishman Lecture Hall greeted the readers. The event started off with Franny Choi introducing Zoe Tuck, who read poetry from her book, Bedroom Vowel. According to a blurb on the BUNNY Presse website, “The poems in Bedroom Vowel are chatty and slippery, taking quick turns from casual conversation about breakfast to  the commodification of identity. These are poems that frequently contemplate the sensuous qualities of language, and participate in them as a bulwark against (or a spell to transform) misfortune.”

Following the reading by Tuck, literature professor Michael Dumanis introduced the next reader of the evening, Devon Walker-Figueroa ’15. A Bennington College alumna and a former student of Michael, she read a poem—about memory, identity, and home—from Philomath, named after her hometown in Oregon. It was written in a creative writing class at Bennington. Following that, Figueroa read some of her recent work, too.

After the reading and a brief Q&A, Zoe Tuck and Devon Walker-Figueroa signed their books for the students. The copies were sold in Tishman. Philomath and Bedroom Vowel are both available for sale at the Bennington Bookstore.