Virtual Events

Adaptation is big business in Hollywood. There is a professional, technical aspect to adaptation. Nevertheless, an adapter’s relationship to their material also contains the adapter’s own style. This panel will bring together successful screenwriters who are also playwrights and novelists. How do they express their originality through what they choose to adapt and how they approach the adaptation? We will look at issues of fidelity in translation along with strategies of adaptation.

The arts should belong to everyone. Lucky Jefferson is excited to present research from ongoing focus groups and the surveying of Black-identifying writers and artists in Chicago and the US. With support from Illinois Humanities, this research is a step toward advancing creative communities of color by raising awareness about the harms that continue to exist in publishing. Participants will be able to learn new insights and copartner with us offline to develop new communities of practice.

A lively discussion among poet-scholars situates A. B. Spellman’s poetry in the context of his roles as a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement, a jazz critic, and a senior arts administrator at the NEA, where he had a lasting impact on funding for inner-city, rural, and tribal communities. Spellman (a recent Grammy winner) will also read a selection of his poetry, which is infused with an awareness of community and other artistic practices, including sculpture, painting, dance, and music.

How many BIPOC disabled authors have published books in the past five years? We don’t know, because no one tracks it (yet). As Alice Wong writes, there is a wonderful set of new books by disabled authors, yet “the percentage of books published by disabled authors is still disproportionate and paltry.” What can disabled authors do to support one another’s paths to publication? What can the industry do to bring greater disability representation? Join these disabled authors to discuss and conspire!

Exploring the unexpected coalitions and mixed methods occurring in their creative writing, our panelists critically reflect on how their neurodiversity and/or disabilities influence their creative expression. This panel brings together a dynamic group of poets and scholars whose work challenges conventional narratives and celebrates the rich tapestry of neurodiverse and crip thought.

Trans and queer fats are waiting for their “moment,” as it’s still radical to include characters that positively represent us in fiction and nonfiction. This panel explores the challenges and rewards of writing while fat, creating fat characters, how to create positive narratives for fat readers living at the intersection of their queer identities and fatness, and other craft issues. Panelists will offer ways to transform negative narratives around fatness and queerness into positive ones.

It’s not always possible for neurodivergent writers or those with physical or mental disabilities to follow popular writing advice. These authors share strategies and work-arounds that help them research, complete, revise, and submit writing projects. They also address ways to maintain professional relationships when attending events or communicating with others—and urge the publishing and literary worlds to embrace and celebrate the distinctive contributions of the disabled and neurodivergent!

Luminaries of the Hebrew and Israeli literary scene discuss their latest work, home and homeland, Jewish and Israeli identity, living in Israel and the diaspora, and the role of the writer and literary world in such a time as this.

In this challenging job market, starting your own business can be a viable alternative to waiting for opportunities from institutions. Individuals with a background in the humanities possess unique skills and talents that are invaluable for running a business in the publishing space. These include telling compelling stories, communicating authentically, and understanding what drives people. In this event, entrepreneurs share how they use their humanities training to help them succeed in business.

Writers in the Global South face institutional barriers to accessing resources that help many writers further their careers. This panel of writers, publishers, editors, and a translator, from different countries and different genres, will outline and explore ways the literary worlds of both the Global North and the Global South can make publishing opportunities, as well as fellowships, residencies, grants, and postgraduate programs, more equitable for writers, regardless of national origin.

Currently in the United States, authors are being banned and educational institutions are facing a backlash against diversity and inclusion. But we have a plurality of literary voices, as seen in Matwaala South Asian Diaspora Poets, which thrives in its diversity. This panel will present poems representing religious, linguistic, regional, and cultural diversity in South Asian American poetry. These multiple voices signify our democracy, thus standing against censorship and suppression of DEI.

This multigenre panel explores ways in which queer writers of horror, at various stages of their careers, uniquely interact with haunting, dread, and conceptions of queerness in their work. Focuses include queering the horror genre, how “dread” and “terror” manifest in each panelist’s writing, and in what ways the ever-changing queer experience plays a role in our work. Panelists will also offer insight into how writers of any genre might approach terror and dread in their writing.

Art monster or administering angel. Madwoman or supermom. Motherhood is a confining narrative, yet within its tedium is a struggle to define our social relationships and community structures. The writers in this panel reach for past examples to explore ways to better care for our children, our art, and our communities. Through memoir, biography, and cultural criticism, they excavate history, science, and family legacy to trouble the stories we are told and to revise for future possibility.

These poetry and prose writers’ work grapples with how to mother in new situations for which there is no road map. They’re breaking generational legacies of trauma, reconnecting after estrangement, parenting a small child after age fifty, or adapting wisdom from different times and cultures for today. Their work repurposes or reinvents traditional literary forms to present complex and nuanced takes on what it means to raise another human being.

Kathi Wolfe wrote brilliant, funny poems that upended society’s expectations of queer blind and disabled people. She has also been a powerful advocate for accessibility within literary and queer communities. Her activism, humor, challenge, and big heart have had a profound influence on writers and advocates in the DC area, where she made her home for decades, and nationwide. Poets who knew her well will read Kathi’s poems and pay tribute to her poetry, activism, and many charms.

A critic once said that Isabel Allende’s work “embraced the cause of humanity,” as her perspective was broad enough to touch the hearts of many without watering down her clearly stated values and beliefs. This panel explores how several novelists and poets have advocated for human rights, gender equality, democracy and anti-fascism, and ecological sustainability in ways that help readers feel respected and included, starting from common ground to build bridges toward expanded empathy for others.