The CSU Pueblo Creative Writing Program kicks off its Southern Colorado Reading Series this spring with two nationally recognized authors and a celebration of student work.
The series opens February 19 at 2:30 p.m. in the LINC with poet Nicky Beer. Beer is author of Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes (Milkweed, 2022), which won the 2023 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Poetry. Her other books, The Octopus Game (2015) and The Diminishing House (2010), both received the Colorado Book Award for Poetry.
She has been honored by the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, the Poetry Foundation, Ragdale, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Beer currently teaches at the University of Colorado Denver, where she serves as poetry editor for Copper Nickel.
Next up is novelist Steven Dunn on April 8 at 2:30 p.m. in the LINC., Dunn, who also goes by Pothole, is a Whiting Award winner who was shortlisted for Granta magazine’s Best of Young American Novelists. He’s written three novels: Potted Meat (2016), water & power (2018), and Tannery Bay (2024), which he co-authored with his Katie Jean Shinkle. Potted Meat was a 2017 Colorado Book Award Finalist and made VICE magazine’s Best Books of 2016. The book was adapted into the short film, The Usual Route.
The series wraps up with the Tempered Steel Release Party on May 7 at 5:30 p.m. in Buell Communications Center Room 110 (the TV studio). The event celebrates the 2026 edition of CSU Pueblo’s literary magazine, Tempered Steel, featuring readings from this year’s student contributors.
The Southern Colorado Reading Series has brought nationally and internationally recognized poets and writers to the CSU Pueblo campus for over ten years.
