Writers Series continues Sept. 18 with faculty member Erica Trabold

Erica Trabold. Photo by Kimberly Dovi


Essayist Erica Trabold, a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at Sweet Briar, will read from her work at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 18, in the Reahard Learning Gallery in Mary Helen Cochran Library. The event is part of the College’s Writers Series and is free and open to the public.

“We’re honored and delighted to have Erica join us this year at Sweet Briar,” said Professor John Gregory Brown, who directs the English and creative writing program. “She’s a gifted and graceful lyric essayist with a unique narrative voice. I’m looking forward to hearing her read her work, and I’m so pleased that our students will get to work with her this year on their own writing.”


Erica Trabold, “Five Plots”


Trabold is the author of the book “Five Plots” (Seneca Review Books, 2018), selected by John D’Agata as the winner of the inaugural Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize. Her essays appear in Brevity, The Rumpus, Passages North, The Collagist, South Dakota Review, Seneca Review, Essay Daily and elsewhere.

Trabold’s reading on Sept. 18 will focus on “Five Plots,” which “uses the Midwestern landscape to explore themes of family, home, belonging and exile,” she says. Each essay in the book is rooted in Nebraska, Trabold’s home state.

“What I love about creative nonfiction is the distance it dissolves between the writer and reader,” says Trabold, who will teach three sections of the 12-week course The Mindful Writer this fall. “I’m looking forward to getting to know my students through the things they choose to write about — their interests, their passions, their questions. I think I’ll learn a lot about the Sweet Briar community from them, too.”

For more information about this Writers Series event, please contact Brown at brown@sbc.edu. Up-to-date information on all campus events is at sbc.edu/events.