Writers in Camden (10th Anniversary Programming) – MFA Alumni Reading featuring Deena ElGenaidi, Micaiah Johnson, & Brook McClurg

Acclaimed authors and MFA alumni Deena ElGenaidi, Micaiah Johnson, and Brook McClurg will read from their work in Rutgers-Camden’s Campus Center Multipurpose Room.

Deena ElGenaidi is a writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut novel, Dust Settles North, was released in September 2025 with Bindery. Her writing has been featured in Vulture, Insider, Nylon, Salon, Oprah Daily, and elsewhere. Deena holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Camden and her MA in English from Villanova University.

Micaiah Johnson is a Brooklyn-based author and scholar. She received her BA in creative writing from the University of California, Riverside, and her MFA in fiction from Rutgers-Camden. She received her doctorate at Vanderbilt university. On her mother’s side, she is a first-generation traditional high school graduate. Her debut novel The Space Between Worlds won the Compton Crook Award and was an Editors’ Choice at The New York Times. NPR named it one of best books of 2020 and one of the best science fiction books of the last decade. Her follow-up novel, Those Beyond the Wall, an eerily timely looked at violence during apartheid, was released March 12th, 2024. In her academic work she is concerned with questions at the intersection of race and technology, particularly as revealed in 19th Century America, a time punctuated by spectacular shifts in both. She also works in the necropolitical implications of preservation, both in centuries past and in our present moment of the Sixth Great Extinction.

Brook McClurg is an Assistant Professor in the English and Comparative Literature Department at San José State University and editor-in-chief for ReedMagazine, California’s oldest literary journal. A Fulbright research fellow, his nonfiction, fiction, poetry and translation work have appeared in many literary journals. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart prize, and his work “Geometry of Absence” was listed as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays. His first book, A Dictionary of Modern Consternation, won the Permafrost Prize in Nonfiction and was published in 2024 by The University of Alaska Press.

Free admission. Registration encouraged. Refreshments provided. Books available for purchase.

Register here for October 23 events!

All Writers in Camden readings are free and open to the public. To celebrate and commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Writers House here at Rutgers University-Camden, we are offering above-and-beyond opportunities to engage with us and philanthropically support the Writers House. These include an additional cocktail reception on October 23, swag, and more.

Learn More Here