Middlesex Community College will host award-winning writer John Fulton as part of the college’s Visiting Writers Series at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday, October 3 in the Richard and Nancy Donahue and Family Academic Arts Center Recital Hall in Lowell.

“The teaching of reading and writing fiction is more essential than ever in this divisive and divided moment since this discipline teaches us not only the skills and techniques for understanding our world but also how to imagine and empathize with those who may be different from us”

“The teaching of reading and writing fiction is more essential than ever in this divisive and divided moment since this discipline teaches us not only the skills and techniques for understanding our world but also how to imagine and empathize with those who may be different from us,”Fulton said. “As a teacher and writer, I value helping students learn how to find their own voices. Just as importantly, I encourage them to imagine the world as seen through perspectives not their own.”

A professor and director of the MFA program at UMass Boston, Fulton has published four books of fiction, including the newly released “The Flounder and other stories” (Blackwater Press, 2023) – a Poets & Writers Page One New and Noteworthy Book selection.

He has also written “The Animal Girl” (LSU Press, 2007), a Story Prize Notable Book; “Retribution” (Picador USA, 2001), which won the Southern Review Short Fiction Prize; and the novel “More Than Enough” (Picador USA, 2022), a Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers selection and the Salt Lake City Tribune Best Adult Novel for the West for 2002.

Fulton’s short fiction has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and has been published in many literary magazines and journals, including Missouri Review, The Sun, Zoetrope, and Ploughshares. He has received grants and fellowships from the New York Writers Institute, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs.

MCC Visiting Writers Series is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program and the Office of Student Engagement.