S122.
Rebel Voices Only
Saturday, February 10, 2024
9:00 am to 10:15 am
Hear from writers who pen “the voice of resistance.” Poet Alice Notley has famously said, “It’s necessary to maintain a state of disobedience against ... everything.” Essayist Phillip Lopate has identified “the curmudgeon.” There are many reasons to be disobedient in memoir, essays, reportage, and criticism—to raise awareness, to shine light on buried histories, to give voice to impassioned appeals. But if the objective is to connect, how do we make our defiance work for a broader audience?
Participants
Deborah Taffa is the director of the MFA CW at IAIA in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Winner of the PEN Jean Stein Grant, her memoir Whiskey Tender is forthcoming from HarperCollins, February 20, 2024. A Public Space, MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Tin House, and Kranzberg fellow, she's from the Quechan Nation and Laguna Pueblo.
G’Ra Asim, a writer and musician, is an assistant professor of English at Washington University in St. Louis. Asim is the author of Boyz n the Void: a mixtape to my brother, which was named one of Kirkus’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2021.
Inara Verzemnieks is the author the critically-acclaimed memoir Among the Living and the Dead. A member of the faculty of the University of Iowa's nonfiction writing program, she has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing and the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award.
