By Savannah Brantley, OWU ’25
Megan Pinto, a 2014 Ohio Wesleyan University graduate, will return to her alma mater this month to read from her new poetry collection, “Saints of Little Faith.”
“When I first started writing ‘Saints of Little Faith,’ I wanted to explore my relationship with God,” said Pinto, MFA. “But the poems quickly revealed they wanted to explore my relationship with my father, his recent psychotic break, and the women in my family. Another concern of the book: how do we receive love?”
Pinto will read at 4:15 p.m. Oct. 24 in the Milligan Room of OWU’s Slocum Hall, 75 S Sandusky St., Delaware. Afterward, she will take questions and sign copies of her book, released in September. The event is free and open to the public.
In “Saints of Little Faith,” Pinto engages with South Asian experiences of addiction, domestic violence, and mental illness. She confronts these realities while simultaneously envisioning life as holy, and the divine as capable of gentleness. In addition to writing the book, Pinto is reading the Audible version, set for release Oct. 22.
Victoria Chang, director of Poetry at Georgia Tech, said of Pinto’s collection, “[T]hese are beautifully rendered ruminative and thoughtful coming-of-age poems populated with people, such as the speaker’s ill father and past lovers, miniature narratives, and small fragments that pass by and become a line, as if the reader is on a train at twilight.”
Matthew Olzmann, senior lecturer of Creative Writing for Dartmouth College, adds, “In these sharply resonant poems, Megan Pinto writes with grace and precision about self-discovery, grief, desire, and existential yearning. Each poem is finely crafted by a poet of incredible skill and vast expanses of feeling.”
In addition to her book, Pinto’s individual pieces have appeared in Guernica, Ploughshares, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other outlets.
At Ohio Wesleyan, Pinto studied English and Theatre. She earned her Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, New York, and has received scholarships and fellowships from organizations including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Pinto also earned the 2023 Anne Halley Poetry Prize from the Massachusetts Review and was selected for the Poets & Writers 2024 Get the Word Out poetry cohort.
Copies of “Saints of Little Faith” will be available for purchase at the reading. Learn more about Pinto at www.meganpinto.com and more about OWU’s Department of English and Creative Writing concentration at owu.edu/English.
Source, Photo: OWU
