NBF Presents: Balancing Acts
Where do we draw the line between ourselves and our writing? Join National Book Award–honored authors Camonghne Felix (Build Yourself a Boat, 2019 Longlister; and most recently, Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom) and novelist Sarah Thankam Mathews (All This Could Be Different, 2022 Fiction Finalist)at 11:30 a.m. in the Baxter Room of the J. D. Williams Library on the University of Mississippi campus for readings and conversation about balancing the political, the personal, and the fictional in one’s creative projects and writing processes. Moderated by A. H. Jerriod Avant, author of Muscadine and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi. The panel is preceded by lunch at 11 a.m., with registration encouraged.
Presented in partnership with the 32nd Oxford Conference for the Book and the National Book Foundation.
Camonghne Felix, poet and essayist, is the author of Dyscalculia, which was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Build Yourself a Boat, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in poetry, shortlisted for the PEN/Open Book Awards, and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ poets.org, Freeman’s, Harvard Review, LitHub, The New Yorker, PEN America, Poetry, and elsewhere. Her essays have been featured in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Teen Vogue, and other places. She is a professor of writing at The New School. Her latest book is Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom. The book, part-memoir and part-manifesto, is an interpretation of Black radical literary traditions and reimagination of freedom through refusal.
Sarah Thankam Mathews is the author of All This Could Be Different, which was shortlisted for the Discover Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and 2022 National Book Award in fiction. Mathews’s debut novel was also a New York Times Editor’s Choice and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, Time, Slate, and BuzzFeed. Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. She lives and works in New York and writes the newsletter thot pudding.
Where do we draw the line between ourselves and our writing? Join National Book Award–honored authors Camonghne Felix (Build Yourself a Boat, 2019 Longlister; and most recently, Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom) and novelist Sarah Thankam Mathews (All This Could Be Different, 2022 Fiction Finalist)at 11:30 a.m. in the Baxter Room of the J. D. Williams Library on the University of Mississippi campus for readings and conversation about balancing the political, the personal, and the fictional in one’s creative projects and writing processes. Moderated by A. H. Jerriod Avant, author of Muscadine and Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi. The panel is preceded by lunch at 11 a.m., with registration encouraged.
Presented in partnership with the 32nd Oxford Conference for the Book and the National Book Foundation.
Camonghne Felix, poet and essayist, is the author of Dyscalculia, which was longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and Build Yourself a Boat, which was longlisted for the National Book Award in poetry, shortlisted for the PEN/Open Book Awards, and shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ poets.org, Freeman’s, Harvard Review, LitHub, The New Yorker, PEN America, Poetry, and elsewhere. Her essays have been featured in Vanity Fair, New York Magazine, Teen Vogue, and other places. She is a professor of writing at The New School. Her latest book is Let the Poets Govern: A Declaration of Freedom. The book, part-memoir and part-manifesto, is an interpretation of Black radical literary traditions and reimagination of freedom through refusal.
Sarah Thankam Mathews is the author of All This Could Be Different, which was shortlisted for the Discover Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and 2022 National Book Award in fiction. Mathews’s debut novel was also a New York Times Editor’s Choice and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, Vogue, Vulture, The Los Angeles Times, Time, Slate, and BuzzFeed. Mathews grew up between Oman and India, immigrating to the United States at seventeen. She lives and works in New York and writes the newsletter thot pudding.
Artwork by Charlie Buckley, Soybean Neon
