Writers' Festival

53rd Annual Writers’ Festival

Schedule of Events:

1pm to 2pm: Q&A

The 53rd Writers’ Festival guests Sholeh Wolpé, Leticia Urieta, and Beth Ann Fennelly gather with students and other attendees of the festival for a casual Q&A discussion of their work. As with all all other Writers' Festival programming, this event is free and all are welcome to attend.

Location: Alston Campus Center, AL-Luchsinger Lounge - 141 East College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030

4pm to 5:30pm: Reading by Beth Ann Fennelly

Beth Ann Fennelly has published three poetry books: Open House, Tender Hooks, and Unmentionables, all with W. W. Norton. She is also the author of 3 books of prose: Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs; Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother, a collection of essays; and The Tilted World, a novel co-authored with her husband Tom Franklin. Beth Ann’s poetry has been in over fifty anthologies, including Best American Poetry, The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Poets of the New Century, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi, where she was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year.

Location: Dana Fine Arts Building, Winter Theater - 141 East College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030

8pm to 9:15pm: Keynote: Sholeh Wolpé

Sholeh Wolpé is an Iranian-American poet, playwright, and librettist. Her publications number over twelve collections of poetry, translations, and anthologies, as well as several plays. Her most recent book, Abacus of Loss: A Memoir in Verse, was chosen by The Mary Sue magazine as one of “8+ Beautiful, Contemporary Novels Written in Verse That Make Poetry Accessible,” and was hailed by Colorado Review as a book that “examines the masks of patriarchy in powerful metaphor and narrative.” Sholeh's publications number over twelve collections of poetry, translations, and anthologies, as well as several plays. She is the recipient of a PEN/Heim, Midwest Book Award, and the Lois Roth Prize and was a 2024 award judge for Neustadt International Prize.

Wolpé’s translations of the twelfth-century Sufi mystic poet, Attar, The Conference of the Birds (W.W. Norton & Company), and of the twentieth-century Iranian rebel poet Forugh Farrokhzad, Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad (University of Arkansas Press), have garnered awards and established Wolpé as a celebrated re-creator of Persian poetry in English.

Most recently, her play SHAME was featured in New Iranian Plays, published by Aurora Metro books (2022). Wolpé wrote the libretto for an oratorio, “The Conference of the Birds,” and a multi-genre performance, “The Seven Valleys”, which premiered respectively at the Broad Stage and the Getty Villa Museum in 2022. “Song of Exile,” commissioned by The Arlington Chorale premiered in Virginia in 2023. Her most recent commission as a librettist is a full-length opera for six award-winning female composers.

Sholeh has lived in Iran, Trinidad, and the United Kingdom and is currently a writer-in-residence at the University of California, Irvine, and the poetry editor at The Markaz. She performs her literary work solo and with musicians internationally. She divides her time between Southern California and Barcelona.

Like all other Writers' Festival events, this event is free and open to the public.

Location: Dana Fine Arts Building, Winter Theater - 141 East College Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030