Agnes Scott College

Georgia, United States

Residential program

The Agnes Scott Writers' Festival, annual since 1972, centers on the Steven R. Guthrie Memorial Writers' Festival Contest, a literary competition open to any graduate or undergraduate student in the state of Georgia. Distinguished guest writers give readings during the festival, judge finalist entries in the competition, and conduct workshops for finalists.

The creative writing curriculum includes introductory courses, workshops, and advanced tutorials and independent studies in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and dramatic writing.

For more information, contact Robert Meyer-Lee, department chair.


Contact Information

Agnes Scott College
English Department
Decatur
Georgia, United States
30030-3797
Email: rmeyerlee@agnesscott.edu
https://www.agnesscott.edu/writersfestival/



DEGREE PROGRAMS

The Agnes Scott Writers' Festival, annual since 1972, centers on a literary competition open to any graduate or undergraduate student in the state of Georgia. Distinguished guest writers give readings during the festival, judge finalist entries in the competition, and conduct workshops for finalists.

The creative writing curriculum includes introductory courses, workshops, and advanced tutorials and independent studies in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and dramatic writing.

For more information, contact Steve Guthrie, Director of Creative Writing and English Dept. Chair.





FACULTY

Anna Cabe

Anna Cabe is a Pinay American writer. She hails from many places but calls Memphis, TN, home. She received a BA in English literature-creative writing from Agnes Scott College in 2013 and a Fulbright Fellowship in Indonesia from 2013 to 2014. Anna earned an MFA in fiction from Indiana University in 2018, where she taught creative writing and composition, served as a student representative for the MFA program, and worked as the web and nonfiction editor for Indiana Review. Upon graduating, she was a Fulbright Fellow in the Philippines for the 2018-2019 academic year. She was the guest-editor for The #Demands Issue of Killjoy and is Co-Fiction Editor for Split Lip Magazine with Janelle Bassett. Anna was a 2015 Kore Press Short Fiction Award semifinalist, a finalist for Midwestern Gothic's Summer 2016 Flash Fiction Series, a finalist for the 2015 Boulevard Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers, and the second runner-up in StoryQuarterly's Sixth Annual Fiction Prize in 2019. She attended the 2019 NVM & Narita Gonzalez Writers' Workshop at the University of the Philippines and has received support from The Millay Colony, The Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and the James T. and Ella Rather Kirk Fund of Agnes Scott College. She is completing a novel set during martial law. She is represented by Erin Harris of Folio Literary Management.

https://www.annacabe.com/


Waqas Khwaja

Professor Khwaja is the Ellen Douglass Leyburn Professor of English at Agnes Scott College where he teaches courses in Postcolonial literature, 18th & 19th century British literature, and Creative Writing. He has published four collections of poetry, (Hold Your Breath, No One Waits for the Train, Mariam’s Lament, and Six Geese from a Tomb at Medum), and a literary travelogue (Writers and Landscapes), about his experiences as a fellow of the International Writers Program, University of Iowa, in addition to three edited anthologies of Pakistani literature (Cactus, Mornings in the Wilderness, and Short Stories from Pakistan). He served as translation editor (and contributor) for Modern Poetry of Pakistan (Dalkey, 2011), a project jointly sponsored by the National Endowment of the Arts and the Pakistan Academy of Letters, showcasing the work of 44 poets from Pakistan’s national and regional languages, and has guest-edited a special issue of scholarly articles on Pakistani Literature for the Journal of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Studies. He has also guest edited a special issue on Pakistani poetry for Atlanta Review. His poems and translations have appeared in US, South Asian, European, African, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern publications, literary journals, and anthologies.

A practicing lawyer and visiting professor of law in Pakistan before migrating to the U.S. in 1994, Khwaja has published articles and essays on writers from many linguistic and cultural traditions and on subjects as wide-ranging as literature, economics, history, culture, and politics.

A recipient of special recognition for outstanding creative writing from the South Asian Literary Society (SALA), USA, (2017), and the Orient-Occident Arts Laureate award from the Funda?ia Academia Interna?ional? Orient–Occident, Romania (2021), among other honors, Khwaja regularly organizes poetry readings at Agnes Scott College, including an annual public celebration of poetry as part of the international “100 Thousand Poets for Change” project.

https://wkhwaja.agnesscott.org/


Alan Grostephan

Professor Grostephan teaches creative writing--fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and literary translation. His interests include literary modernism, 20th century American, post-colonial, and Latin American literatures. In 2001, he co-founded a nonprofit in a slum outside Bogotá, Colombia, where he taught creative writing and theater. He is the editor and translator of Stories of Life and Death, a collection writing by young Colombian writers, and the author of Bogotá, a novel, long-listed for the Pen/Robert W. Bingham Award and chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the best ten books of fiction in 2013. He is currently finishing his second novel.

https://www.agnesscott.edu/directory/faculty/grostephan-alan.html


Courtney Faye Taylor

COURTNEY FAYE TAYLOR is a writer, visual artist, and the author of Concentrate (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Rachel Eliza Griffiths as the winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Concentrate was awarded the T.S. Eliot Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America and was named a finalist for the NAACP Image Awards, the Lambda Literary Awards, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards, the Society of Midland Authors Award, and the Heartland Booksellers Award. The collection has been featured in Publishers Weekly, Essence Magazine, The Los Angeles Times and named among the “Best Poetry of the Last Year” by Ms. Magazine.

Courtney earned her BA from Agnes Scott College and her MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program. She is the winner of the 92Y Discovery Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her visual art has been exhibited at the Charlotte Street Foundation and The Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art online. Her writing can be found in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, and elsewhere.

Courtney lives in Atlanta, GA where she is working on her debut novel.

https://courtneyfayetaylor.com/


Natalie Villacorta

Natalie Villacorta is a writer from McLean, Virginia. After studying biology and English at Brown University, she worked as a reporter for POLITICO. She left journalism to pursue her MFA in creative nonfiction at Oregon State University, graduating in June 2018. She is now a PhD student in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati, where she is an Albert C. Yates Fellow. Her creative writing has appeared in Joyland, Hobart, Moss, DIAGRAM and The Offing.

http://www.natalievillacorta.com/





COMMUNITY

Below is a list of guest writers hosted since the Agnes Scott College Writers' Festival began in 1972.

1972 May Sarton, Michael Mott, Marion Montgomery

1973 Robert Penn Warren, George Garret

1974 Hollis Summers, Larry Rubin

1975 Richard Eberhardt, Josephine Jacobsen

1976 Reynolds Price, Michael Mott, Nathalie Fitzsimmons Anderson ’70

1977 Eudora Welty, Guy Davenport, Josephine Jacobsen

1978 John Young, Larry Rubin, Josephine Jacobsen

1979 Harry Crews, Donald Davis, Josephine Jacobsen

1980 Howard Nemerov, Josephine Jacobsen

1981 James Merrill, Theodore Weiss, Josephine Jacobsen

1982 Margaret Atwood, Doris Betts, Josephine Jacobsen

1983 Donald Justice, Josephine Jacobsen, Gretchen Schultz

1984 Richard Wilbur, Linda Pastan, Gretchen Schultz, Kay Stevenson

1985 Maxine Kumin, Greg Johnson, Gretchen Schultz

1986 Denise Levertov, Andrew Lytle, Memye Curtis Tucker '56

1987 Tillie Olsen, Memye Curtis Tucker '56, Jane Zanca '83

1988 Michael Harper, Anne Rivers Siddons, Memye Curtis Tucker '56

1989 James Dickey, Memye Curtis Tucker '56, Elizabeth Bartlett

1990 Josephine Jacobsen, Alfred Uhry, Memye Curtis Tucker '56, Dorothy Sussman '87, Jane Zanca '83

1991 Gloria Naylor, Sharon Olds, Memye Curtis Tucker '56

1992 Rita Dove, Robert Coover, Greg Johnson, John Stone, Memye Curtis Tucker '56

1993 Jorie Graham, Charles Johnson, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Memye Curtis Tucker '56

1994 Carolyn Forché, Melissa Fay Greene, Lee Abbott, Mary Kratt

1995 Michael Harper, Peter Carey, Julie Kalendek, Memye Curtis Tucker '56

1996 Alicia Ostriker, Philip Lopate, Joy Williams, Sally Ann Stevens

1997 Jane Smiley, Katha Pollitt, Pearl Cleage, Anjail Rashida Ahmad ’92

1998 Jamaica Kincaid, Thylias Moss, Sherman Yellen

1999 Tim O'Brien, Eavan Boland, Frank Manley, Memye Curtis Tucker '56

2000 Joyce Carol Oates, Li-Young Lee, Jim Grimsley, Robert Earl Price

2001 John Updike, Marsha Norman, Sharon Olds, Anjail Rashida Ahmad ’92

2002 Marilyn Nelson, Bapsi Sidhwa, Scott Russell Sanders

2003 Julia Alvarez, Greg Williamson, Cary Bynum

2004 Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Bo Ball

2005 Oliver Sacks, Linda Hogan, Caroline Murnane ’00

2006 Paul Muldoon, Percival Everett, Nathalie Fitzsimmons Anderson ’70

2007 Suzan Lori Parks, Yusef Kumanyakaa, Beatriz Rivera-Barnes

2008 Martín Espada, Rubén Martínez, Gillian Lee-Fong ’00

2009 Anita Desai, Junot Diaz, Sabrina Marks

2010 Scott Russell Sanders, Paul Guest, Sarah Scoles '05

2011 Jennifer Nettles '97, Danzy Senna, Arda Collins

2012 Joy Harjo, Benjamin Percy, Jacqueline Goldfinger ’00

2013 Gish Jen, Cristina Garcia, Anjail Rashida Ahmad ’92

2014 Nick Flynn, Terrance Hayes, Louisa Hill '09

2015 Chris Abani, Tracy K. Smith, Jennifer Bartell '05

2016 Richard Blanco, Dani Shapiro, Charleen McClure '10

2017 Claudine Rankine, Patrick Phillips, Kayla Miller '11

2018 Eula Biss, Mat Johnson, Jacqueline Goldfinger '00

2019 Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Nikky Finney, Gillian Lee-Fong '00

2020 Festival Canceled. Scheduled guests Lidia Yuknavitch, Tina Chang, and Anna Cabe '13 served as judges for the Writers' Festival Contest

2021 Rita Dove, Jacqueline Goldfinger '00

2022. Lidia Yuknavitch, Tina Chang, Anna Cabe '13

2023. Elizabeth Acevedo, Caryl Phillips, Samantha Jayne Allen ‘11

Writers & Scholars Series (https://www.agnesscott.edu/english/writers-scholars-series.html)

Agnes Scott College Writers' Festival (https://www.agnesscott.edu/writersfestival/)