S180B.
Root to Branch: Four Generations of Women Writers on the Sustenance of Community
Saturday, March 26, 2022
12:10 pm to 1:10 pm
This event will be a panel discussion between four women of diverse ages, races, and backgrounds who work as literary groundbreakers and who share one common distinction: they come from Kentucky. When the world shifted to life at a distance, we were all searching for ways to draw together. We found renewed community in our successes as women from the same region who branched out. In this event, we explore how reconnecting with the people you’ve met in hometowns past may change your literary future.
Participants
Danni Quintos is the author of Two Brown Dots, winner of the twentieth A. Poulin Jr. Prize, and Python, an ekphrastic chapbook. She is a Kentuckian, a mom, an educator, and an Affrilachian Poet. She received her BA from the Evergreen State College and her MFA in poetry from Indiana University.
Crystal Wilkinson, Kentucky’s poet laureate, is the award-winning author of Perfect Black: Poems, The Birds of Opulence (2016 Ernest J. Gaines Prize), Water Street, and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of a 2021 O. Henry Prize and a 2020 USA Artists Fellowship.
Marissa Davis is a poet from Paducah, Kentucky, now residing in Brooklyn. Her chapbook, My Name & Other Languages I Am Learning How to Speak (Jai-Alai Books) was selected by Danez Smith for Cave Canem’s 2019 Toi Derricotte and Cornelius Eady Prize. Davis holds an MFA from New York University.
Ellen Hagan is a writer, performer, and educator. Her books include: Hemisphere, Crowned, and Watch Us Rise. Ellen is the director of the poetry and theatre departments at the DreamYard Project and directs their International Poetry Exchange Program with Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines.
