by Hamilton Cochrane | Mar 18, 2025 | Staff
Buffalo’s poet laureate Aitina Fareed-Cooke
On Thursday, April 3, at 7 PM, in Grupp Fireside lounge, Aitina Fareed-Cooke, the poet laureate of Buffalo, will perform under the auspices of the Canisius Contemporary Writers Series.
A question-and-answer session and reception will follow. The event will be livestreamed: For a link, email series coordinator Mick Cochrane: cochrane@canisius.edu
Aitina Fareed-Cooke was born and raised in Buffalo and earned a BA in English and MA in education from Buffalo State University. She is a multifaceted artist—wife, mother, creative arts strategist, national recording artist, and Buffalo’s current poet laureate. She founded Get Fokus’d Productions, an award-winning media arts company dedicated to collaborating with emerging and professional artists to produce “human-first” narratives through digital storytelling. Among her awards are 43 North’s Ignite Buffalo People’s Choice Award, Buffalo State University’s Young Alumnus Achievement Award, a Citizens Bank Community Champion award, and the Arts Services Inc. Trailblazer of the Arts Award.
Founded with a grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation and continued through the Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professorship Program, the writer series is generously supported today by the Hassett, Scoma, and Lowery Endowments, and by gifts from its loyal patrons; cooperating partners are The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library, Just Buffalo Literary Center, and Talking Leaves Books.
Learn more about Aitina Fareed-Cooke and the writers series
Submitted by: Mick Cochrane, Professor, English
by Hamilton Cochrane | Mar 17, 2025 | Staff
Aidan Ryan ’14, creative writing, recently discussed his forthcoming first book I Am Here You Are Not I Love You (Univ. of Iowa Press) on the Fill to Capacity podcast, hosted by Pat Benincasa. The book is in part a biography of Ryan’s aunt and uncle, the visual artists Cindy Suffoletto and Andrew Topolski, and in part a memoir tracing their influence on Ryan’s own path into the arts and development as a writer.
The podcast episode, entitled “A Dialogue Across Time & Absence,” explores the turbulent and competitive New York art scene and touches on the topics of family, creativity, the sacrifices demanded by a life in the arts, and grief.
Listen to the episode on YouTube
Read more about Ryan’s book I Am Here You Are Not I Love You
Submitted by: Mick Cochrane, Professor, English
by Hamilton Cochrane | Mar 7, 2025 | Staff
On Feb. 26, students in Prof. Mick Cochrane’s All-College Honors seminar “Bob Dylan, American Genius” were treated to a performance by Buffalo musicians Cathy Carfagna and Dave Meinzer.
Carfagna and Meinzer played a selection of Dylan songs—including “Girl from the North Country,” “My Back Pages,” “Ballad of a Thin,” and “Like A Rolling Stone”—as well as several of their own compositions. They discussed Dylan’s growth as a performer and songwriter, his increasing musical sophistication, and his many influences, such as Woody Guthrie, Buddy Holly, and Chuck Berry. A special highlight was their performance of “Subterranean Homesick Blues” with additional original verses written by members of the seminar.
“It is one thing to listen to Dylan’s music through videos and sound files,” one student commented, “but to hear and see it played live was another experience entirely.” Another remarked, “It was very cool to hear a musician’s perspective!”
Meinzer is a member of The Buffalo Music Hall of Fame who has released his own songs on a number of CDs, most recently Tambourine. Carfagna has performed and released music both as a solo artist and as a member of several groups, including the Jazzabels, the Vores, and the Black Rock Beatles.
The event was made possible through the support of the Thomas Connelly Endowment.
Submitted by: Mick Cochrane, Professor, English
by Hamilton Cochrane | Feb 18, 2025 | Staff
On Saturday, March 1, at 1:00 p.m., Ryan Wolf ’12 will be signing copies of his new young adult novel, Songs For The Off Season, at Barnes and Noble on Niagara Falls Boulevard. Kirkus Reviews described the book as “a lyrical and sweet coming-of-age story,” a book that “creates an emotional tone that beckons to readers, inviting them to reflect on their own mortality and place in the world.”
Wolf is the author of three other young adult novels—Watches and Warnings, Control Room, and The Real Unreal—as well as the Creeper Critter Keepers chapter book series for children and Moving Through Walls and The Memory Vampires for middle graders. Wolf majored in creative writing, English, and communication studies at Canisius and earned his M.A. in the humanities from the University of Chicago.
You can read more about Ryan Wolf on his author website: https://www.ryanswolf.com
Submitted by: Mick Cochrane professor, English
by Hamilton Cochrane | Jan 31, 2025 | Staff
Graham Stowe, assistant professor of English and director of the Canisius Writing Center, published an article in WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship (49.2, Winter 2025) titled “‘Everything Counts’: Impacts of Centering Social Justice in a Writing Center.”
The article explores the impact of social-justice-centered tutor-training courses, like the one Stowe teaches, on student-tutors.
Stowe’s ENG 390, Tutoring Writing, the course that Canisius tutors take in preparation for their work in the writing center, is grounded in Paulo Freire’s educational philosophy emphasizing radical empathy, dialogue and empowerment. Stowe’s research documents the positive outcomes of this approach. The students in the study showed evidence of personal growth, greater openness to diverse perspectives, and increased awareness of how writing center work connects with the kind of social justice and care for the whole person that is at the core of our Jesuit mission.
Stowe’s study suggests that “a writing center explicitly oriented towards justice shows extraordinary promise for nurturing more conscious, engaged citizens.”
Read Stowe’s essay
Submitted by: Mick Cochrane, Professor, English
