Southeast Review teams up with the Jerome Stern Reading Series to welcome poet, author Leila Chatti for a workshop and reading

By Addison Delgado

The Spring 2026 semester is nearing its end, and the Jerome Stern Reading Series has been back in session, with a different author taking the stage every Tuesday night at The Bark to share their work with the crowd.

As part of the semesterly series, Southeast Review co-sponsors an event and hosts its annual spring workshop. This spring, SER has invited Tunisian-American poet and author Leila Chatti to FSU. Her publications include the September 2025 release, Wildness Before Something Sublime, her 2020 debut collection of poems, Deluge, and several chapbooks.

Southeast Review is a national literary magazine housed in the English department and edited and managed by graduate students. The Jerome Stern events give emerging and established writers a platform to share their voices with FSU’s community, and the annual workshop is a staple of the series.

“Part of SER’s mission is to present emerging writers on the same stage as well-established ones, and that goes beyond the page,” says the journal’s editor-in-chief Heather Truett, who is a doctoral student in creative writing. “As a community of emerging writers ourselves, we want to engage with established authors. We feel strongly about our responsibility to be good literary citizens. Supporting other writers and providing opportunities to our fellow students is part of that.”

Each year for its spring workshop, SER invites a new writer from a different genre, varying the voices they represent. The arrangement exposes attendees to different kinds of works, as each visiting author can share distinctive insights on writing in a particular genre.

Last year’s visiting author, Venita Blackburn, is a fiction writer; in 2024, poet Franny Choi visited while she was working on an essay collection. In addition to her writing, Chatti currently teaches in the low-residency Master of Fine Arts Program at Pacific University and is a Provost Fellow at the University of Cincinnati, where she lives.

“We recently published one of Leila's poems and invited her to be the judge for our annual poetry contest in 2025, so she was an obvious pick for this spring's visiting writer,” Truett says. “I am a big fan of her work, and I think the flexibility of her style offers something for everyone.”

Attending these workshops gives FSU students a glimpse into the publishing field and a career as an established author. Previous years have traditionally offered a Q&A format with the visiting author, but last year, Blackburn conducted an interactive workshop with attendees.

“Venita Blackburn presented us with some of her ideas about writing and then led us through a couple of brief exercises, asking a few people to share their work. It was a beneficial experience,” Truett says.

All majors within the English department are encouraged to attend the Tuesday, March 31, workshop at 3 p.m. in the Williams Building Common Room. Chatti will also be reading from her works Tuesday evening at 8 at The Bark.

Addison Delgado is a double major in English-Literature, Media, and Culture and in media/communication studies.

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