Poetry-in-the-Round Hosts Laura Sims

The Poetry-in-the-Round reading series is excited to bring the novelist and poet Laura Sims to campus. Laura Sims will read from and discuss her work at 5 p.m., Tuesday, November 4, in the Chancellor’s Suite of the University Center. This reading is free and open to the public.

About the Event

Laura Sims’s literary career began in poetry, but recently her focus has turned to fiction that works along the boundary of literary and genre. Filled with suspense, tension, wit and humor, Sims’s novels are playful, frightening and strike an unusual balance between compulsive readability and complexity. Mona Awad called Sims’s most recent novel, How Can I Help You, “A dark and spellbinding descent into jolly madness.” Laura Sims will read from her work, discuss literary craft with Nathan Oates, Ph.D., and take questions from the audience. There will be refreshments and books for sale at the event.

About the Author

Laura Sims’s third novel, The Man, is due out from Putnam in July of 2026. Her novels How Can I Help You (2023) and Looker (2019) have been on Best Books lists in The New York Times, Vogue, People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, Publishers Weekly and more. An award-winning poet, Sims has published four poetry collections; her essays and poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, Lit Hub and Electric Lit. She lives in New Jersey, where she works part-time as a children’s librarian.

About the Series

Poetry-in-the-Round has brought some of the best contemporary writers from around the world to Seton Hall University for the past three decades. Some of those visitors have included Joyce Carol Oates, E.L. Doctorow, Nadine Gordimer, C.K. Williams, Jonathan Franzen, John Ashbery, Russell Banks, Adrienne Rich and many others. The series has worked to bring established and up-and-coming new writers to the attention of Seton Hall students and the community. Nathan Oates, professor of English, is the director of the Series. For more information please contact him at: [email protected] or (973) 761-9388.

Categories: Arts and Culture, Education