Featured Events & Readers

Scroll over presenter photos for biographies.

 

A Reading & Conversation with Shira Erlichman, Hanif Abdurraqib, and Brenda Shaughnessy, Moderated by Cortney Lamar Charleston, Sponsored by Alice James Books
Thursday, March 5, 2020 from 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Hanif Abdurraqib
  

  Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of The Crown Ain't Worth Much, They Can't Kill Us until They Kill Us, New York Times best-seller Go Ahead in the Rain, and a new collection of poems, A Fortune for Your Disaster.
  (Photo Credit: Marcus Jackson)

• Cortney Lamar Charleston, Moderator
  

  Cortney Lamar Charleston is a Cave Canem fellow from the Chicago suburbs. His debut collection, Telepathologies, won the 2016 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, selected by D.A. Powell. He began writing and performing poetry as a member of The Excelano Project when he was an undergraduate studying economics and urban studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His poetry is a marriage between art and activism and a call for a more involved and empathetic understanding of the diversity of the human experience. In 2017, Charleston was a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He currently serves as poetry editor at The Rumpus.
  (Photo Credit: Jeremy Michael Clark)

• Shira Erlichman
  

  Shira Erlichman is a poet, musician, and visual artist. She was born in Israel and immigrated to the US at age six. Her poems explore recovery––of language, of home, of mind––and value the "scattered wholeness" of healing. She earned a BA at Hampshire College and has been awarded the James Merrill Fellowship by the Vermont Studio Center, the Visions of Wellbeing Focus Fellowship at AIR Serenbe, and a residency by the Millay Colony. Her debut poetry book, Odes to Lithium, came out in September 2019. She is the author and illustrator of the picture book Be/Hold.
  (Photo Credit: Hieu Minh Nguyen)

• Brenda Shaughnessy
  

  Brenda Shaughnessy s the author of five poetry collections, including The Octopus Museum, So Much Synth, and Our Andromeda, which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award, the International Griffin Prize, and the PEN Open Book Award. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper's, the New York Times, the New Yorker, O magazine, Paris Review, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. A 2013 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, she is associate professor of English and creative writing at Rutgers University-Newark.
  (Photo Credit: Janea Wiedmann)

Donna Hemans, Aimee Liu, and Ellen Meeropol in Conversation with Kristen Young, Sponsored by Red Hen Press
Thursday, March 5, 2020 from 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Donna Hemans
  

  Donna Hemans is the author of the novel River Woman, winner of the 2003–4 Towson University Prize for Literature. Tea by the Sea, for which she won the Lignum Vitae Una Marson Award for Adult Literature, is her second novel. Her short fiction has appeared in the Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, and the anthology Stories from Blue Latitudes: Caribbean Women Writers at Home and Abroad, among others. She received her undergraduate degree from Fordham University and an MFA from American University.

• Aimee Liu
  

  Aimee Liu is the author of the forthcoming novel Glorious Boy, as well as Flash House, Cloud Mountain, and Face and the memoirs Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders and Solitaire. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, published as a Literary Guild Super Release, and serialized in Good Housekeeping. She’s received a B&N Discover Great New Writers Award and special mention by the Pushcart Prize. Liu holds an MFA from Bennington College and teaches in Goddard College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program at Port Townsend, Washington. More at aimeeliu.net
  (Photo Credit: David Conklin)

• Ellen Meeropol
  

  Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels Kinship of Clover (Women’s National Book Association Great Group Read), On Hurricane Island (semifinalist for the Massachusetts Book Award), and House Arrest. Essay publications include the Boston Globe, The Writer, and Guernica. Ellen’s dramatic script telling the story of the Rosenberg Fund for Children was produced most recently in Manhattan featuring Eve Ensler, Angela Davis, and Cotter Smith. A founding member of Straw Dog Writers Guild, Ellen leads their Social Justice Writing project.
  (Photo Credit: Danielle Tait)

• Kristen Millares Young, Moderator
  

  Kristen Millares Young is the author of the novel Subduction. A prize-winning investigative journalist, book critic, and essayist, Kristen serves as Prose Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House in Seattle. Her writing appears in the Washington Post, the Guardian,and Poetry Northwest, as well as the anthologies Pie & Whiskey, a 2017 New York Times New & Notable Book, Latina Outsiders: Remaking Latina Identity, and Advanced Creative Nonfiction. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced “Snow Fall,” which won a Pulitzer and a Peabody. 
  (Photo Credit: Natalie Shields)

10 Years of CantoMundo: Founders, Faculty, and Fellows
Thursday, March 5, 2020 from 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Denice Frohman
  

  Denice Frohman is an award-winning poet, performer and educator. She is a CantoMundo Fellow, former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, and Leeway Transformation Award recipient. Her work has appeared in Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color, the Acentos Review, ESPNW, and more.
  (Photo Credit: Corey McDonough)

• Deborah Paredez
  

  Deborah Paredez is a poet, performance scholar, and cultural critic. She is the author of the critical study Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory and of the poetry volumes This Side of Skin and Year of the Dog (forthcoming), which is debuting at AWP this year. Her poetry and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, National Public Radio, Boston Review, Poetry, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing and ethnic studies at Columbia University.  She's thrilled to be back in her hometown of San Antonio, which is also the birthplace of CantoMundo, the national organization for Latinx poets that she co-founded in 2009 with Celeste Guzmán Mendoza, Pablo Miguel Martinez, Norma E. Cantú, and Carmen Tafolla.

• Willie Perdomo
  

  Willie Perdomo is the author of The Crazy Bunch, The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon (a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Smoking Lovely (winner of the PEN Open Book Award), and Where a Nickel Costs a Dime (a finalist for the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award). His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Poetry, The Best American Poetry 2019, and African Voices.He teaches at Phillips Exeter Academy.

The Path To Rad Empowerment: YA Lit Today, Sponsored by Blue Flower Arts
Thursday, March 5, 2020 from 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Elizabeth Acevedo
  

  Elizabeth Acevedo is a National Poetry Slam Champion and the New York Times bestselling author of The Poet X and With the Fire on High. She received the 2018 National Book Award and is also the winner of the Boston Globe--Horn Book Award Prize for Best Children’s Fiction and the author of the chapbook Beastgirl & Other Origin Myths. Acevedo holds a BA in performing arts from the George Washington University and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland.

• Mahogany L. Browne
  

  Mahogany L. Browne is a writer, organizer, educator, and spoken word poet. She is the author of the YA poetry book Black Girl Magic and the children’s book Woke Baby. Her poetry collections include Kissing Caskets and Redbone. She co-edited the poetry anthology The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 3: Black Girl Magic and is at work on WOKE: A Young Poets Guide To Justice. Browne is the recipient of numerous literary fellowships and has appeared on BuzzFeed Live, HBO, and PBS NewsHour. She is the artistic director of Urban Word NYC and the poetry coordinator at St. Francis College’s MFA Program.

• Carrie Fountain
  

  Carrie Fountain is a poet and novelist and serves as the 2019 Texas poet laureate. She is the author of two poetry collections, Instant Winner and Burn Lake, winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series Award, and the YA novel I’m Not Missing. Her first children’s book, The Poem Forest, tells the story of American poet W.S. Merwin and the palm forest he grew from scratch on the island of Maui. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Poetry, and the New Yorker, among many others. She is the host of KUT’s This Is Just to Say, a radio show and podcast where she has intimate conversations on the writing life with other poets and writers. Fountain is writer-in-residence at St. Edward’s University.

• Marilyn Nelson
  

  Marilyn Nelson is the author or translator of some twenty poetry books for adults and young adults and of several books for children. Among her books are The Fields Of Praise: New And Selected Poems, which won the 1998 Poets’ Prize; Carver: A Life In Poems, which won the 2001 Boston Globe/Hornbook Award and the Flora Stieglitz Straus Award; and Fortune’s Bones, which was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book and won the Lion and the Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Poetry. Nelson’s honors include two NEA creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Frost Medal, and the Ruth Lilly Prize. She was the poet laureate of the state of Connecticut from 2001-2006.

A Reading and Conversation with Jean Kwok, Dani Shapiro, and Jacqueline Woodson, Sponsored by Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau
Thursday, March 5, 2020 from 3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Jean Kwok
  

  Jean Kwok is the New York Times and international bestselling author of Girl in Translation, Mambo in Chinatown, and the hit novel Searching for Sylvie Lee. Her work has been published in eighteen countries and is taught in universities, colleges, and high schools across the world. Kwok’s numerous honors include the American Library Association Alex Award, the Chinese American Librarians Association Best Book Award, and the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award international shortlist. She received her bachelor's degree from Harvard University and earned an MFA from Columbia University.
  (Photo Credit: Chris Macke)

• Dani Shapiro
  

  Dani Shapiro is the author of the instant New York Times bestseller, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love. Her other books include the memoirs Hourglass, Still Writing, Devotion, and Slow Motion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Along with teaching writing workshops around the world, Shapiro has taught at Columbia and New York University, and is the co-founder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. Shapiro can currently be heard hosting her popular podcast, Family Secrets.
  (Photo Credit: Michael Maren)

• Jacqueline Woodson
  

  Jacqueline Woodson is a four-time National Book Award finalist, a four-time Newbery Honor winner, a two-time NAACP Image Award Winner, and a two-time Coretta Scott King Award winner. Her memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, received the 2014 National Book Award. Woodson has also been named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature and the Young People’s Poet Laureate, and she is the recipient of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award and the Children’s Literature Legacy Award. Her latest novel, Red at the Bone, hailed as “exquisite” by Toni Morrison, was an instant bestseller.
  (Photo Credit: Carlos Diaz)

A Tribute to W.S. Merwin, Sponsored by Copper Canyon Press & Write On, Door County
Thursday, March 5, 2020 from 3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Forrest Gander
  

  Forrest Gander, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Be With, was born in the Mojave Desert, grew up in Virginia, and taught comparative literature and literary arts for many years at Brown University. Other recent books include the novel The Trace, Eiko & Koma, and works in translation Alice Iris Red Horse: Poems by Gozo Yoshimasu and, with Patricio Ferrari, The Galloping Hour: French Poems of Alejandra Pizarnik. He is the recipient of grants from the Library of Congress and the Guggenheim, Howard, Whiting, and United States Artists Foundations. 
  (Photo Credit: Nina Subin)

• Naomi Shihab Nye
  

  Naomi Shihab Nye is the Young People's Poet Laureate of the United States and the editor of Sunday poems for the New York Times Magazine. She is also on faculty at Texas State University and the editor of poetry for the Texas Observer. She has written or edited more than 35 books, most recently Voices in the Air—Poems for Listeners and The Tiny Journalist. 
  (Photo Credit: Ha Lam)

• Michael Wiegers, Moderator
  

  Michael Wiegers, a veteran of independent publishing for nearly three decades, is the executive editor / editor-in-chief of Copper Canyon Press. He additionally serves as poetry editor for Narrative magazine, edited The Essential Merwin, and edited two retrospective volumes of the poetry of Frank Stanford, including Hidden Water and What About This, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist and recipient of the Balcones Award in Poetry. A translator of Spanish language poetry, he co-edited with Monica de la Torre Reversible Monuments: Contemporary Mexican Poetry. 
  (Photo Credit: Miriam Berkley)

• Matthew Zapruder
  

  Matthew Zapruder is the author of five collections of poetry, including Come On All You Ghosts and Father’s Day, as well as Why Poetry, a book of prose. In 2000, he cofounded Verse Press, and he is now editor at large at Wave Books, where he edits contemporary poetry, prose, and translations. He was the founding director of the Bagley Wright Lecture Series. From 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of editor of the poetry column for the New York Times Magazine. He is an associate professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.

A Reading & Conversation with Ambassador Rick Barton, Alex Dehgan, Lee Gutkind, & Lola Shoneyin, Sponsored by AWP
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 10:35 am to 11:50 am
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Ambassador Rick Barton
  

  Ambassador Rick Barton teaches at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, where he serves as a co-director of Princeton’s Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative and Ullman Fellowships. His 2018 book, Peace Works: America's Unifying Role in a Turbulent World, uses a mix of stories, history, and analysis to offer an affirmative approach to foreign affairs through concrete and attainable solutions. Barton started USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives and was America’s ambassador to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in New York, the UN’s Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, and the first Assistant Secretary of State for Conflict and Stabilization Operations. He led conflict management initiatives in over 40 crisis zones across the globe, from Haiti, Iraq, Nigeria, Burma, Pakistan to Turkey. Published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, the Boston Globe, and numerous other international outlets, Barton is a guest on news shows ranging from NPR to all of the major networks.  

• Alex Dehgan
  

  Alex Dehgan is the CEO of Conservation X Labs.  Conservation X Labs builds new technologies through its labs, and harnesses open innovation, to create new solutions to end the sixth mass extinction.  Alex previously served as the Chief Scientist of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with rank of Assistant Administrator, and worked in multiple positions in the Office of the Secretary of State.  Alex was also the founding country director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Afghanistan Program and helped create Afghanistan’s first national park.  Alex is the author of the book The Snow Leopard Project, which describes the effort.

• Lee Gutkind, Moderator
  

  Lee Gutkind, recognized by Vanity Fair as “the Godfather behind creative nonfiction,” is the author or editor of more than 30 books and founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction, the first and largest literary magazine to publish narrative nonfiction exclusively. Gutkind has been featured on national radio and television, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central), Good Morning America, NPR’s Talk of the Nation, and All Things Considered.  He is Distinguished Writer-in-Residence and professor in the School for the Future of Innovation at Society at Arizona State University. 
  (Photo Credit: Corey Morton)

• Lola Shoneyin
  

  Lola Shoneyin's works include three books of poems, So All the Time I Was Sitting on an Egg, Song of a Riverbird, and For the Love of Flight, and three children's books, Mayowa and the Masquerades, Do As You are Told, Baji, and Iyaji, the Housegirl. Her debut novel, The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2019. Shoneyin is the founder of Book Buzz Foundation, an NGO that is devoted to promoting literacy, creating reading spaces, and organizing cultural and arts-focused events. In 2016, Shoneyin founded Ouida Books. She also runs Ouida House, a bookstore and a creative hub.

A Reading & Conversation with Sarah Broom & Ada Calhoun, Sponsored by Grove/Atlantic and Seattle Arts & Lectures
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Sarah M. Broom
  

  Sarah M. Broom is a writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, the Oxford American, and O, The Oprah Magazine, among others. A native New Orleanian, she received her master's in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004. She was awarded a Whiting Foundation Creative Nonfiction Grant in 2016 and was a finalist for the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Creative Nonfiction in 2011. She has also been awarded fellowships at Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the MacDowell Colony.
  (Photo Credit: Adam Shemper)

• Ada Calhoun
  

  Ada Calhoun is the author of the memoir Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, named an Amazon Book of the Month and one of the top ten memoirs of 2017 by W magazine; and the history St. Marks Is Dead, one of the best books of 2015, according to Kirkus and the Boston Globe. She has collaborated on several New York Times bestsellers and freelanced for the New York Times, New York, and The New Republic. Her O Magazine essay “The New Midlife Crisis” was named the internet’s fifty-fifth-most-read story of 2017 by Chartbeat.

Field Work: Poetry, Science, and STEM, Sponsored by Poets House
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Katharine Coles
  

  Katharine Coles’ seven collections of poems include, most recently, Wayward (Red Hen Press, 2019). Poet-in-Residence at the Natural History Museum of Utah and the Salt Lake City Public Library for the Poets House program Field Work, she traveled to Antarctica in 2010 to write poems under the auspices of the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she is founding co-director of the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature and is currently working with an interdisciplinary team to launch a minor in Dark Skies Studies at Utah. She has received awards from the NEA, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

• Alison Deming
  

  Alison Deming is the Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in Environment and Social Justice and Regents’ Professor at the University of Arizona. Her most recent books are the poetry collection Stairway to Heaven (Penguin, 2016), the essay collection Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit (Milkweed, 2014), and Death Valley: Painted Light, a collaboration with photographer Stephen Strom (George F. Thompson, 2016).

• Camille Dungy, Moderator
  

  Camille Dungy is the author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade. She edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology, and served as assistant editor on Gathering Ground: Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade. She was recently the poetry editor for Tin House magazine. Dungy's work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, Best American Essays, Best American Travel Essays, and nearly 30 other anthologies, plus dozens of print and online venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, VQR, Literary Hub, Orion, the Paris Review, and Poets.org. Her honors include a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, a Colorado Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, two NAACP Image Award Nominations, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry. Dungy has held tenured/tenure-track posts at the college and university level since 1998, and she is currently a full professor in the English Department at Colorado State University. camilledungy.com
  (Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan)

AWP Award Series Reading
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Room 007C, Henry B. González Center, River Level

• In Memoriam: Zachary Doss
  

  Zachary Doss was a writer and editor with work appearing in Sonora Review, Fairy Tale Review, DIAGRAM, Paper Darts, and other journals. He earned an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama and was pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing at University of Southern California. His mother, Susan Doss, will be reading on his behalf.

• Ginger Eager
  

  Ginger Eager's essays, short stories, and book reviews have appeared in Terrain.org, Fifth Wednesday Journal, Bellevue Literary Review, the Chattahoochee Review, the Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She has received a nomination for a Pushcart Prize and a notable mention in The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2015.

• Rebecca Lehmann
  

  Rebecca Lehmann’s poetry and creative nonfiction has been published or is forthcoming in Tin House, FENCE, Boston Review, The Georgia Review, Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, and other venues. She is an assistant professor of English at Saint Mary’s College. Her first poetry collection is Between the Crackups. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow, and a PhD from Florida State University.

• Steven Moore
  

  Steven Moore grew up in southeast Iowa and served for seven years in the Iowa Army National Guard. His essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review Online, Georgia Review, Ninth Letter, Pinball, BOAAT, Entropy, and the anthology Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War. He received his MFA in nonfiction writing from Oregon State University and currently works at a nonprofit in Corvallis, Oregon.

American Harvest & White Flights: Marie Mockett and Jess Row in Conversation, Sponsored by Graywolf Press
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Fiona McCrae, Moderator
  

  Fiona McCrae has been director and publisher of Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press since 1994, following 11 years with the British publishers Faber and Faber. Authors that McCrae has published at Graywolf include Mary Szybist, Max Porter, Anna Burns, Daisy Johnson, Elizabeth Alexander, Per Petterson, and Percival Everett. She currently serves on the board of the Anderson Center and as vice-chair of the board of the National Book Foundation. McCrae received the Golden Colophon Award for leadership from the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses in 2014, and in 2017 she and Jeff Shotts received the Editor’s Award from Poets & Writers. 

• Marie Mutsuki Mockett
  

  Marie Mutsuki Mockett is the author of American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland, as well as a novel, Picking Bones from Ash, and a memoir, Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye, which was a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award.
  (Photo Credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths)

• Jess Row
  

  Jess Row is the author of White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination, as well as the novel Your Face in Mine and the story collections The Train to Lo Wu and Nobody Ever Gets Lost. White Flights is his first book of nonfiction. One of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists of 2007, he teaches at the College of New Jersey.
  (Photo Credit: Sarah Shatz)

A Reading & Conversation with Ada Limón, Jake Skeets, and Rigoberto González, Sponsored by Milkweed Editions
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Rigoberto González, Moderator
  

  Rigoberto González is the author of seventeen books of poetry and prose. His awards include a Guggenheim fellowship, an NEA, a USA Rolón fellowship, and an American Book Award. His memoir What Drowns the Flowers in Your Mouth was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography. His most recent book is The Book of Ruin, a poetry collection. Currently, he directs the MFA program at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey. 

• Ada Limón
  

  Ada Limón is the author of five books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and was named one of the top five books of the year by the Washington Post. Her fourth book, Bright Dead Things, was named a finalist for the National Book Award, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She serves on the faculty of the Queens University of Charlotte low-residency MFA program and the online and summer programs for the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
  (Photo Credit: Lucas Marquardt)

• Jake Skeets
  

  Jake Skeets is Black Streak Wood, born for Water's Edge. He is Diné from Vanderwagen, New Mexico. He is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, a National Poetry Series-winning collection. Skeets is a winner of the 2018 Discovery/Boston Review poetry contest and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Skeets edits an online publication called Cloudthroat and organizes a poetry salon and reading series called Pollentongue, based in the Southwest. He is a member of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́: A Diné Writers’ Collective and currently teaches at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona. 
  (Photo Credit: Quanah Yazzie)

A Reading by Robin Coste Lewis, Raquel Salas Rivera, and TC Tolbert, Sponsored by the Academy of American Poets
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Robin Coste Lewis
  

  Robin Coste Lewis was born in Compton, California. She received a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Southern California, an MFA in creative writing from New York University, and an MTS from the Divinity School at Harvard University. She is the author of Voyage of the Sable Venus, winner of the National Book Award in poetry. Lewis is the writer in residence at the University of Southern California. The recipient of a 2019 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, she was appointed the poet laureate of Los Angeles in 2017.
  (Photo Credit: Kelly Miroire)

• Raquel Salas Rivera
  

  Raquel Salas Rivera was born in Puerto Rico and grew up there and in the United States. Rivera is the author of the forthcoming x/ex/exis (poemas para la nación) (poems for the nation), winner of the 2018 Ambroggio Prize. They are also the author of lo terciario/the tertiary, which received the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry and was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry; tierra intermitente; and Caneca de anhelos turbios. Rivera was appointed poet laureate of Philadelphia in 2018. In 2019, Rivera was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow.
  (Photo Credit: Paloma Alicea)

• TC Tolbert
  

  TC Tolbert is the author of Gephyromania and four chapbooks of poetry and is co-editor with Trace Peterson ofTroubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Tolbert is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship and an Arizona Commission on the Arts Individual Artist Award. In January 2019, s/he was the guest editor for Poem-a-Day. In 2019, s/he was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Tolbert was appointed the poet laureate of Tucson, Arizona, in 2017.
  (Photo Credit: Momta Popat)

NBCC Presents: Louise Erdrich and Alice McDermott
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Jane Ciabattari, Introducer
  

  Jane Ciabattari is author of the story collection Stealing the Fire, a former National Book Critics Circle president, a columnist for BBC Culture and the Literary Hub, a member of the Writers Grotto, and on advisory boards of the Story Prize, the Bay Area Book Festival, and Lit Camp.
  (Photo Credit: Sylvia Rosokoff)

• Louise Erdrich
  

  Louise Erdrich is the author of 16 novels, poetry, children's books, short stories, and a memoir. Her first novel, Love Medicine, and her 2016 novel LaRose won National Book Critics Circle Awards. The Round House won the National Book Award. The Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
  (Photo Credit: Hilary Abe)

• Alice McDermott
  

  Alice McDermott is the author of eight novels, most recently The Ninth Hour, winner of France's 2018's Prix Femina, and Someone, an NBCC finalist. Charming Billy won the 1998 National Book Award. At Weddings and Wakes, That Night, and After This were all finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.
  (Photo Credit: Jamie Shoenerger)

• Kate Tuttle, Moderator
  

  Kate Tuttle, a past president of the National Book Critics Circle, writes about books and authors for the Boston Globe. Her reviews, profiles, and interviews have also appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post. She also writes essays on politics, race, and parenting.

A Reading & Conversation with Mira Jacob & Monique Truong, Sponsored by Kundiman
Friday, March 6, 2020 from 8:30 pm to 9:45 pm
Lila Cockrell Theatre, Henry B. González Center, Street Level

• Mira Jacob
  

  Mira Jacob is the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations. Her critically acclaimed novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, and longlisted for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize. She currently teaches at the New School, and she is a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College. She is the co-founder of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn, where she spent 13 years bringing literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to Williamsburg.
  (Photo Credit: Beowulf Sheehan)

• Crystal Hana Kim
  

  Crystal Hana Kim's novel If You Leave Me was named a best book of 2018 by the Washington Post, Literary Hub, and others. A 2017 PEN America/Dau Short Story Prize winner, she has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Jentel, and more. She is a contributing editor at Apogee Journal.
  (Photo Credit: Margarita Coporan)

• Monique Truong
  

  Monique Truong is the Vietnamese American author of The Book of Salt, Bitter in the Mouth, and The Sweetest Fruits. Recipient of a Robert W. Bingham Fellowship, Hodder Fellowship, U.S.-Japan Creative Artists Fellowship, and Guggenheim Fellowship, she is a former refugee, novelist, essayist, lyricist/librettist, avid eater, and retired intellectual property attorney (more or less in this order). She serves as vice president of the Authors Guild and is a member of the Creative Advisory Council for Hedgebrook and Advisory Committee of the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN).
  (Photo Credit: Haruka Sakaguichi)

• Kyle Lucia Wu, Moderator
  

  Kyle Lucia Wu  is the programs and communications manager at Kundiman and a senior editor at Joyland. She has received the Asian American Writers Workshop Margins fellowship and residencies from the Millay Colony, the Byrdcliffe Colony, the Writing Downtown Residency in Las Vegas, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. Her work has appeared in Literary Hub, BOMB Magazine, Guernica, Interview Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at Fordham University and the New School and has an MFA in fiction from the New School.
  (Photo Credit: Margarita Coporan)

My Heart Is Not Blind: On Blindness and Perception, Sponsored by Trinity University
Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Mario Aguirre
  

  Mario Aguirre went to the University of North Texas and obtained a master's degree in education. He obtained his counselor’s license at the University of Houston. Currently, he is a therapist at the San Antonio Rape Crisis Center. where he has worked for 22 years.  

• Larry Johnson
  

  Larry Johnson was born in Chicago and is now a resident of San Antonio.  A graduate of Northwestern University in the School of Speech. he received his master’s degree in economics and Latin American studies. He worked 22 years as a radio and television broadcaster in the US and Mexico and then worked 21 years as a human resource manager with Southwestern Bell.  He is a motivational speaker, author of four books, and advocate and champion for persons with disabilities.

• Michael Nye, Moderator
  

  Michael Nye has received National Endowment for the Arts and Kronkosky Charitable Foundation grants and has exhibited and lectured widely at museums and universities internationally, including Morocco, India, and Mexico. His documentaries, photography, and audio exhibitions Children of Children (stories of teenage pregnancy) and Fine Line (stories about mental health, hunger, and resilience) have traveled to more than 150 cities across the country. His latest book is titled My Heart Is Not Blind: On Blindness and Perception. 

• Natalie Watkins
  

  Natalie Watkins’ diverse professional background includes communications, education, and personal finance counseling. She’s taught in the public-school system; she's become a licensed stockbroker, an insurance representative, and a certified retirement planning counselor. After studying advanced counseling at the graduate level, Natalie has served as an advocate in the special needs community, a mentor to youth, and a companion to the elderly. Natalie writes poetry and prose and maintains a blog. 

Jill Soloway Presents TOPPLE Books in Conversation with Melissa Faliveno, Moderated by Hafizah Geter
Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Melissa Faliveno
  

  Melissa Faliveno is an essayist and former Poets & Writers Magazine senior editor whose debut collection, Tomboyland, is forthcoming in 2020 from TOPPLE Books. Her essays have appeared in Prairie Schooner, DIAGRAM, Midwestern Gothic, and others, and received a notable citation in Best American Essays 2016.
  (Photo Credit: Maggie Walsh)

• Hafizah Geter, Moderator
  

  Hafizah Geter was born in Zaria, Nigeria. Her poetry and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s Indelible in the Hippocampus, Tin House, Narrative Magazine, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Longreads, among others. She is an editor for Little A and TOPPLE Books from Amazon Publishing, and serves on the poetry committee for the Brooklyn Book Festival. Her debut poetry collection, Un-American, is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in Fall 2020.

• Jill Soloway
  

  Jill Soloway is the creator of the groundbreaking Amazon series Transparent, which received two Golden Globes, 24 Emmy nominations, and eight Emmy awards, including two for Soloway’s directing. Soloway founded TOPPLE, an intersectional brand to create TV and film content, as well as TOPPLE BOOKS, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. Jill has published two memoirs, She Wants It: Desire, Power and Toppling the Patriarchy from Crown/PRH and Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants from Free Press/Simon and Schuster. They also cofounded 5050by2020, an artist empowerment network and strategic initiative of Time’s Up, as well as the Los Angeles community organization East Side Jews and the spoken word series Sit 'n Spin.

A Reading & Conversation with Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah & Rion Amilcar Scott, Sponsored by PEN America
Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
  

  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times best-selling author of Friday Black, which received the 2019 PEN/Jean Stein Award. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees.

• Rion Amilcar Scott
  

  Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collection, The World Doesn't Require You (Norton/Liveright, August 2019). His debut story collection, Insurrections (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His work has been published  in journals such as the New Yorker, the Kenyon Review, and Crab Orchard Review. 

A Reading & Conversation with Cave Canem Prize Winners Major Jackson, Donika Kelly & Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Sponsored by Cave Canem
Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Major Jackson
  

  Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including The Absurd Man, Roll Deep, Holding Company, Hoops, and Leaving Saturn, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others, Jackson has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Jackson is a professor at the University of Vermont and serves as the poetry editor of The Harvard Review.
  (Photo Credit: Erin Patrice O’Brien)

• Donika Kelly
  

  Donika Kelly is the author of the forthcoming The Renunciations, Bestiary, and the chapbook Aviarium. A Cave Canem Graduate Fellow and winner the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Prize and a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, Donika works as an assistant professor at Baruch College.
  (Photo Credit: Ladan Osman)

• Julian Randall, Moderator
  

  Julian Randall is a living queer Black poet from Chicago. He is a fellow of Cave Canem and CantoMundo and the winner of a Pushcart Prize. He holds an MFA in poetry from Ole Miss, and his work can be found in POETRY, New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and Vibe Magazine. His first book, Refuse, won the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by Vievee Francis and was a finalist for a 2019 NAACP Image Award. He tweets @JulianThePoet and serves as the Milkweed Editions Fellow.

• Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon
  

  Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon is the author of ] Open Interval [, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Black Swan, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She has written plays and lyrics for the Cherry, an Ithaca arts collective, and in 2018 her work was featured in Courage Everywhere, celebrating women’s suffrage and the fight for political equality, at National Theatre London.

Jack Jones Literary Arts Featured Event
Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C1, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

This event is still coming into focus. More information is coming soon!

Macondo and Gemini Ink: A Celebration of the Alebrijes of San Antonio
Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
HemisFair Ballroom C3, Henry B. González Center, Ballroom Level

• Gregg Barrios, Moderator
  

  Gregg Barrios is a playwright, poet, and journalist. He is a 2013 USC Annenberg Getty Fellow and serves on the board of directors of the National Book Critics Circle. He was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2015. His work has appeared in Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Texas Observer, Texas Monthly, Film Quarterly, San Francisco Chronicle, and more. He is a former book editor of the San Antonio Express-News. He has received a CTG-Mark Taper Fellowship, a Ford Foundation Grant, and a 2013 Artist Foundation Grant for his theater work. He is a graduate of the University of Texas, Austin, and Our Lady of the Lake University San Antonio. He also attended Yale and Harvard Universities.

• Norma E. Cantú
  

  Norma E. Cantú, a daughter of the borderlands, lives in San Antonio. She is the Murchison Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Trinity University in San Antonio and is president of the American Folklore Society. Her novels, Canícula: Snapshots of a Girlhood en la Frontera and Cabañuelas, incorporate the folklife of Texas and Spain, respectively. She has edited and co-edited more than a dozen books, and her most recent publication is a collection of poetry, Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life and Labor.
  (Photo Credit: Joel Salcido)

• John Phillip Santos
  

  John Phillip Santos is Distinguished Senior Lecturer in Mestizo Cultural Studies in the UTSA Honors College. The first Latino Rhodes Scholar with degrees from Oxford University and the University of Notre Dame, Santos is a widely published journalist, Emmy-nominated documentary producer with CBS News and PBS/WNET, and author of a book of poems and two memoirs, one of which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has previously taught at Brown University and directed a $42 million portfolio in media, arts, and culture at the Ford Foundation. Most recently, he has collaborated on public art and “word art” narrative components of the San Pedro Creek Culture Park, including the libretto for an original opera. In 2017, he was awarded the Texas Medal of the Arts.

• Luis J. Rodriguez
  

  Luis J. Rodriguez was Los Angeles poet laureate from 2014-2016. He has 15 books in poetry, children's literature, fiction, and nonfiction, including the bestselling memoir Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. He is founding editor of Tia Chucha Press and co-founder of Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural in the San Fernando Valley. Luis has been teaching creative writing, doing poetry reading, talks, and healing circles in prisons, jails, juvenile lockups, and more for 40 years. His latest poetry book is Borrowed Bones.

• Liliana Valenzuela
  

  Liliana Valenzuela is the acclaimed Spanish language translator of works by Sandra Cisneros, Julia Alvarez, Denise Chávez, and many other writers. As a poet, she is the author of Codex of Love: Bendita Ternura and Codex of Journeys: Bendito Camino. An essayist, journalist, and editor, her poetry has appeared in Edinburgh Review, Indiana Review, Tigertail, Huizache, Borderlands, Drunken Boat, and other publications. She is an inaugural fellow of CantoMundo and a long-time Macondo member.

Laureates for the Pueblo on a River, Sponsored by Gemini Ink & the City of San Antonio
Saturday, March 7, 2020 from 8:30 pm to 9:45 pm
Lila Cockrell Theatre, Henry B. González Center, Street Level

• Jenny Browne
  

  Jenny Browneis the author of three collections of poems (At Once, The Second Reason, and Dear Stranger) and two chapbooks (Welcome to Freetown and Texas, Being), as well as the forthcoming New and Selected Poems, volume 17 in the Texas State Poet Laureate Series. New work has recently appeared in Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, Oxford American, and The Nation. An associate professor of English at Trinity University, she was the 2016-18 City of San Antonio Poet Laureate and the 2018 Poet Laureate of the State of Texas. In 2020, she will be the Fulbright Distinguished Scholar in Creative Writing at Queens's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

• Jim LaVilla-Havelin, Moderator
  

  Jim LaVilla-Havelin is the author of five books of poetry, the most recent of which, West: Poems of a Place, chronicles coming to country life after a lifetime of cities. Poet, critic, educator, and community arts activist, LaVilla-Havelin teaches senior citizens in Bihl Haus’ Go! Arts Program, students in the BYA program at the Southwest School of Art, and youth in the Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center as part of Gemini Ink’s Writers in Communities Program and as poet in residence at the Young Women’s Leadership Academy. 2019 San Antonio Arts Commission’s Distinction in the Arts awardee in literary arts, LaVilla-Havelin is the coordinator of San Antonio’s National Poetry Month activities, the co-founder of Stone in Stream, an organization of writers, visual artists, and activists for the environment, and poetry editor for the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle.

• Octavio Quintanilla
  

  Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection If I Go Missing and the 2018-2020 poet laureate of San Antonio, Texas. His poetry, fiction, translations, and photography have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, Pilgrimage, Green Mountains Review, Southwestern American Literature, the Texas Observer, Existere: A Journal of Art & Literature, and elsewhere. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published in Gold Wake Live, Newfound, Chachalaca Review, Chair Poetry Evenings, Red Wedge, The Museum of Americana, About Place Journal, the American Journal of Poetry, the Windward Review, Tapestry, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas. His visual work has been exhibited at Presa House Gallery, Allstate Almaguer art space in Mission, Texas, the Weslaco Museum, Our Lady of the Lake University, El Centro Cultural Hispano de San Marcos, the Walkers' Gallery in San Marcos, Texas, and the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center / Black Box Theater. He holds a PhD from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and poetry editor for the Journal of Latina Critical Feminism. Octavio teaches literature and creative writing in the MA/MFA program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. octavioquintanilla.com; Instagram, @writeroctavioquintanilla; Twitter @OctQuintanilla

• Carmen Tafolla
  

  Carmen Tafolla, state poet laureate of Texas 2015, first poet laureate of the City of San Antonio 2013-2014, and president of the Texas Institute of Letters, is author of more than 30 books. Her latest poetry book is Carmen Tafolla: New and Selected Works. She has received the Américas Award, five International Latino Book Awards, the Art of Peace Award, and many other distinctions, and has been recognized by the National Association of Chicana & Chicano Studies for work which “gives voice to the peoples and cultures of this land.”