S170.

Tillie Olsen Tribute

122AB, Pennsylvania Convention Center, 100 Level
Saturday, March 26, 2022
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm

 

Tillie Olsen (1912–2007), writer, activist, mentor and supporter of women writers, is central to working class literature, feminist literature, and writing about the imagination and the artistic process. Publications include Tell Me a Riddle (1961) and Silences (1978). “Tillie Olsen helps those of us condemned to silence—the poor, the racial minorities, the women—find our voices” (Maxine Hong Kingston). Presenters share about Olsen's mentoring. Short reading, film excerpts, and slide show.



Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: Tillie_Olsen_Tribute_Event_Outline.pdf

Participants

Moderator:

Katherine Arnoldi (Fulbright, Paraguay 2008–09), created the graphic novel The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom (Graymalkin 2016), All Things Are Labor: Stories (2007, University of Massachusetts Press). Her awards include two New York Foundation of the Arts Awards, DeJur, Henfield, Juniper, and Newhouse.

Elaine Neil Orr is the author of five books of fiction, memoir, and literary criticism. She is a professor of literature at North Carolina State University and serves on the faculty of the Spalding brief-residency MFA in writing program. She was Distinguished Writer in Residence, Wesleyan College, 2016–17.

Ericka Lutz's eight books include the novel The Edge of Maybe. Her award-winning fiction, CNF, and poetry appear in many journals. She was a founding editor at Literary Mama. She taught writing at UC Berkeley. She edits and coaches writers at erickalutz.com. She is Tillie Olsen's oldest grandchild.

Ariel Gore is a Lambda award-winning author and founding editor of the Alternative Press award-winning magazine Hip Mama. Her books include The End of Eve, Hexing the Patriarchy, and the speculative novel-memoir We Were Witches. She teaches writing in the Literary Kitchen (literarykitchen.net).

Anthony Dawahare is the author of Tillie Olsen and the Dialectical Philosophy of Proletarian Literature. He has published on a wide range of multiracial working class writers from the 1930s, including Meridel Le Sueur, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes, and essays on Olsen.

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February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center