News & Events

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 … Continued

Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, was the poet laureate of Mississippi from 2016 to 2021 and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi. She’s won grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Artists, a Pushcart, and a Fulbright to Brazil. … Continued

Edda L. Fields-Black is a specialist in the transnational history of West African rice, of peasant farmers in the precolonial Upper Guinea coast, and of enslaved laborers on antebellum Lowcountry South Carolina and Georgia rice plantations. She is author of Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora and coeditor of Rice: … Continued

Susan Gregg Gilmore is the author of the novels The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, and The Funeral Dress. She has written for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Los Angeles Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. Born in Nashville, she lives in Tennessee with her husband. The Curious … Continued

Natalie Green is the senior manager of public programs at the National Book Foundation. Previously, Natalie was the manager of Los Angeles Programs at PEN America. She holds a BA in English and creative writing from UCLA, is a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends committee member, and she organizes with North Brooklyn Mutual Aid.