McNeese Hosts Poet Nicole Callihan 

Nicole Callihan, a poet and author of This Strange Garment, will give a reading on Friday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m. in the Bulber Auditorium at McNeese State University. 

Callihan’s book, This Strange Garment, was published by Terrapin Books in 2023. Some of the poetry in the book, Callihan wrote while receiving treatment for a breast cancer. In a nod to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, she will include a couple of them in her reading.  

Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. She has received support from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ludwig Vogelstein and the Sustainable Arts Foundation.  

She is also the founder and curator of Braving the Body —a year-long collaboration with Poetry Well which invites poets to reflect on embodied experience and includes workshops, ekphrastic experiences, and an anthology forthcoming from Terrapin Books in 2024. Callihan’s collection SLIP received the Alma Book Award and is forthcoming from Saturnalia Books in 2025.  

Sponsored by the McNeese MFA Program and the Juliet Hardtner Endowed Professorship, this event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Micahel Robins at mrobins@mcneese.edu. 

Founded in 1981, McNeese’s MFA degree program is the oldest MFA program in Louisiana and one of the oldest in the Southeast. 

Persons needing accommodations as provided by the Americans with Disabilities Act should contact the ADA Coordinator at 337-475-5428, voice; 337-475-5960, fax; 337-562-4227, TDD/TTY, hearing impaired; or by email at cdo@mcneese.edu.