Former Shenandoah Contributors to Give Annual Shannon-Clark Lecture at W&L The Sept. 25 lecture will feature Ukrainian poet Julia Kolchinsky and poet and essayist Jaswinder Bolina.

By Emily Innes Stanley
September 11, 2025

Julia Kolchinsky and Jaswinder Bolina will deliver the annual Shannon-Clark Lecture in English at Washington and Lee University at 6 p.m. on Sept. 25 in Northen Auditorium in Leyburn Library.

The event is free and open to the public.

Kolchinsky and Bolina are former contributors to W&L’s Shenandoah literary magazine, and their visit comes at an exciting moment for W&L’s Department of English, which now offers a new 10-course major in creative writing in addition to the major in English.

“Now that we’ve announced the creative writing major, we’re especially excited to welcome two accomplished writer-scholars to W&L to discuss their work and why writing matters, especially in turbulent times, as the final event celebrating Shenandoah’s 75th anniversary,” said Beth Staples, assistant professor of English and editor of Shenandoah.

Kolchinsky, an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Denison University, is a Ukrainian poet who came to the United States as a refugee when she was 6 years old. She is the author of four poetry collections, most recently “Parallax” (2025), which was selected as a finalist for the Miller Williams Prize by Patricia Smith. Her other books include “40 Weeks” (2023), “Don’t Touch the Bones” (2020) and “The Many Names for Mother” (2019). Her next book, “When the World Stopped Touching” (2027), is a collaborative collection with Ukrainian poet Luisa Muradyan.

Kolchinsky’s poems have appeared in Poetry magazine, the American Poetry Review and Ploughshares; her nonfiction can be found in Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, Shenandoah and The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought and has won Michigan Quarterly Review’s James A. Winn Prize in Nonfiction. She is working on a collection of poems and linked lyric essays about parenting her neurodiverse child and the end of her marriage under the shadow of the war in Ukraine.

Bolina is the chair of the English Department and the Creative Writing Department at the University of Miami. He is the author of several books of poetry and essays, including his debut essay collection “Of Color” (2020) and his most recent book “English as a Second Language and Other Poems” (2023). Previous books include “The 44th of July” (2019), which was longlisted for the 2019 PEN America Open Book Award; “Phantom Camera” (2013), winner of the 2012 Green Rose Prize; “Carrier Wave” (2007), winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry; and the digital chapbook “The Tallest Building in America” (2014).

Bolina’s poems have been featured in “The Best American Poetry” series and have appeared in Poetry magazine, The New Yorker, the American Poetry Review and Ploughshares. His essays can be found in The Washington Post, the Paris Review and Shenandoah.

As part of their visit to W&L, Kolchinsky and Bolina will lead a retreat with students pursuing majors in English and creative writing on Sept. 26, titled “Creative Writing for Resistance and Survival.” The retreat will include discussions of poems, an exploration of how to find inspiration and endurance for writing during difficult times and writing prompts.

The Shannon-Clark Lectures in English, established by a gift from a Washington and Lee alumnus who wishes to remain anonymous, honor the memories of Edgar Finley Shannon, chairman of Washington and Lee’s Department of English from 1914 until he died in 1938, and Harriet Mabel Fishburn Clark, a grandmother of the donor and a woman vitally interested in liberal arts education.