S156. Acts of Love: Brian Turner, Katie Farris & Major Jackson Read & Converse, Sponsored by Alice James Books
Saturday, February 10, 2024
10:35 am to 11:50 am
Alice James Books presents three celebrated, accomplished writers to share their most recent work and engage in conversation together. Brian Turner will read from his new trilogy of poetry books and Katie Farris from her acclaimed 2023 debut and memoir-in-poems. The reading and conversation will be led by Major Jackson, who will contribute poems in communion with their work and guide a conversation between the group about grief, illness, loss, and love as the ultimate act of resistance.
This event will take place in person in the Kansas City Convention Center and will be livestreamed for virtual audiences. All livestreamed events include open captions and ASL interpretation.
Participants
Carey Salerno is the executive editor and director of Alice James Books. She is the author of Tributary (Persea Books, 2021), Shelter (2009), and an editor of the anthology Lit from Inside: 40 Years of Poetry from Alice James Books. Her poems, essays, and articles are in print and online.
Brian Turner is the author of five books of poetry. His memoir My Life as a Foreign Country was published in 2014. He’s the editor of The Kiss, and co-edited The Strangest of Theatres. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, Harper’s, among others. Turner was featured in the documentary film Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience, nominated for an Academy Award. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, and he’s received numerous other fellowships such as an NEA Literature Fellowship in Poetry and a Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation.
Katie Farris’s work has been commissioned by MoMA and appears in American Poetry Review, Granta, McSweeneys, The Nation, and Poetry. She is the author of the chapbook A Net to Catch My Body in its Weaving, which won the 2020 Chad Walsh Poetry Award from Beloit Poetry Journal, and boysgirls, a hybrid-form book, as well as co-translator of many books of poetry. She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University. She is currently an associate professor in creative writing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Standing in the Forest of Being Alive is her first book of poems.
Major Jackson is the author of six poetry books, including Razzle Dazzle: New & Selected Poems (2023). He’s edited several volumes including: Best American Poetry 2019, and Renga for Obama. A recipient of fellowships from Guggenheim, NEA, and others, Jackson received a Whiting Writers’ Award and was honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, and others. Jackson is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in the Humanities at Vanderbilt University. He serves as the host of The Slowdown and the Poetry Editor of The Harvard Review.
