For 20 years, Williston has been offering its students the exciting opportunity to listen to seasoned writers speak, and be able to ask them questions.

Williston’s Writer’s Workshop series, which is celebrating its 20^th year, has, and will, offer professional writers including Madeleine Blais, Timothy Donnelly, Colum McCann, and Nic Stone.

Madeleine Blais, who visited Williston on October 16, is a journalist, author, and professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst journalism department. Blais is a parent of the class of 2000, and 2004, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1980 for her article, “Zepp’s Last Stand,” as well as being nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.

On November 6, Williston will welcome Timothy Donnelly, an American poet who has received the Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts in 2012. Donnelly has also won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award in 2012 and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award in 2014.

The poet is well known for his poetry collections, The Cloud Corporation published in 2008, as well as the poem “Hymn to Life,” published in 2014.

Nic Stone will be visiting Williston in January, and is an accomplished writer, well known for her novel Dear Martin, loosely based on shooting deaths of unarmed black teens, focusing on one, inparticular who tries to see if Martin Luther King Jr’s teachings can work in modern day America.

Perhaps the most notable, and high-profile writer coming to Williston is Colum McCann, who won the National Book Award in 2009 for his critically-acclaimed novel Let The Great World Spin.

Along with writing six novels and three collections of stories, he has won a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, and the Irish Novel of the Year Award. In 2010 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 2011 a literary award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2011, McCann won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the more famous literary awards in the world.

McCann has written books including Thirteen Ways of Looking, Transatlantic, and most recently, Letters to a Young Writer.

Every English class was required to read one book by McCann for summer reading or will have reading assigned during the trimester in order to prepare for his visit on November 10 and 11.

AP English 11 and AP English 12 were required to read Let The Great World Spin, English 12 was required to read Letters to a Young Writer, and Writers’ Workshop read Thirteen Ways of Looking.

Although McCann will not be giving a lecture, he will be guest teaching different classes, giving students the chance to interact with a world-renowned author.

Senior Elise Dunn really enjoyed reading Let The Great World Spin during the summer for her AP English 12 class, and is really looking forward to hearing McCann speak in class.

“I’m excited to hear him speak about how differing points of view can unify people’s experiences.”

Junior Rachel Burke, currently a student in AP English 11, read McCann’s novel, Let The Great World Spin.

“Personally, I loved McCann’s use of the diversity of NYC to create an impressive story about human nature.”

Maddie Elsea ’19, also a student in AP English 11, really liked the story.

“Let the Great World Spin opened my eyes to a story I had only known in passing (the story of Philippe Petit’s tightrope walk) by creating a web of intricate and beautiful stories containing characters I could really connect with.”