Poet Michael Mercurio hosts and curates “What the Universe Is,” a poetry reading series featuring poets and writers Rita Banerjee and Amanda Shaw reading at 7:30 pm EST on Tuesday, February 11, 2025. Register for the reading on Zoom and join the reading live at: bit.ly/WTUIFeb2025! And here’s more information about the reading & writers below:
Make some time for poetry during this shortest of months. Come hear two exceptional poets read for you on Zoom, so you don’t have to leave the house in these cold & dark days. Let these poets bring you light & warmth!
Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is author of Disobedient Futures,CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, Echo in Four Beats, “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and Cracklers at Night, and co-writer of the documentary Burning Down the Louvre. Her work appears in Academy of American Poets,Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. She received a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the book’s opening chapters “Birth of Cool,” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter, “The Female Gaze,” was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.
Amanda Shaw is the author of It Will Have Been So Beautiful (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2024). Based in Washington, DC, she is a teacher and editor at the World Bank and other international organizations. Her poems have appeared in LEON Literary Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, and Lily Poetry Review, which she recently joined as the reviews editor. Over the last 25 years, she has taught students of all ages and backgrounds in New York, Boston, Detroit, and Rome, Italy.
It’s very easy to register at bit.ly/WTUIFeb2025 — make sure you don’t miss out!
TheMFA Program for Writersrecently celebrated its annual winter residency this past January. The residency featured inspiring lectures and classes from both faculty and graduating students. And writers and readers can access the wonderful craft discussions and lectures from the MFA Program for Writers faculty online here. All MFA Store proceeds directly support graduate student scholarships in the MFA Program for Writers.
Rita Banerjee’s Opening Lecture, “The Poetry and Power of Witness” asks, “How do we as writers process the various kinds of social trauma that inform and affect our daily lives?” In Against Forgetting, Carolyn Forché argues against an easy descent into forgetfulness or a culture of oblivion as espoused a constant carousel of rotating news headlines. She instead introduces the notion of “poem as trace, poem as evidence” and how the work of a writer can serve as a witness to and record of history. And in her introduction to Playing in the dark, Toni Morrison writes that, “Writing and reading mean being aware of the writer’s notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability.” Some authors, studied in this talk, who wrestle with both their response and responsibility as witness to their particular social and historical moment, include Carolyn Forché, Solmaz Sharif, Fatimah Ashgar, Paul Celan, George Abraham, Noor Hindi, Jo Ann Beard, Yoko Tawada, Julio Cortázar, Agyeya, James Baldwin, Carvell Wallace, and Carl Phillips.
The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 – January 2025, and can be accessed here: https://www.wwcmfa.org/store/
In describing the complex and thought-provoking readings of the SAAG Masthead in 2024, Associate Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde Iman Iftikhar writes, “Reading in 2024 often felt like fumbling for grounding amidst relentless upheaval. At times, it offered escape and solace. At others, it demanded grappling, interrogation, and a necessary confrontation. Whether through poetry, history, fiction, or essays, our reading this year insisted on engagement: on seeing, feeling, and remembering to live, even when it felt unbearable.
“These reflections do not aim to present a neat list of 2024’s ‘best; books or ‘essential reads.’ Instead, they are fragments of what stayed with us: works that lingered and called us back. Our favorites include a novel set in Baltimore tracing the lives of the Palestinian diaspora, texts that provide much needed clarity on revolutionary politics, a quiet yet searing study of sound and space, some comfort reads, and much more. These books held mirrors to the year and world we lived through, compelling us to look even closer when we could not look away. Here, in the voices of those who read and felt with these works, we share not only our most loved reads of the year but the struggles they opened up for us, allowing us to see anew.”
And of her selected readings in 2024, SAAG Editor Rita Banerjee writes:
One poetry collection that showed me how form could explode on the page, and how polyvocality and the acknowledgement of our ancestors could be conveyed, was JJJJJerome Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies. The collection plays with the idea of “Master of Ceremonies” as someone who both entertains and has authority over the stage. With his stutter, Ellis has difficulty pronouncing ‘master’ (which then becomes ‘aster’ in his work). Throughout the collection, Ellis interrogates the notion of master, both as the figurehead who controls the lives of others, often under authoritarian or tyrannical rule, and as a symbol of accomplishment and the mastery of craft.”
Rita Banerjee will introduce and lead the discussion for Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2014 film, Haider, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, on December 10, 2024 from 6:15-8:45 pm for the Institute for Indology and Tibetology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, (Ludwigstr. 31, Seminarraum 427). Anyone interested in translation studies, Modern South Asian literature, or art house film is welcomed to join the screening.
“The Bollywood director Vishal Bhardwaj has made his name by adapting Shakespeare into film, using the plays to reflect the violence and vicissitudes of modern India. Maqbool, an adaptation of Macbeth, was set in the Mumbai underworld; Omkara transported Othello to the feudal badlands of northern India. His latest effort, a loose adaptation of Hamlet called Haider that takes place in Kashmir during the turbulent 1990s, has become one of the most acclaimed and contentious Bollywood movies of the year…[In the film] Haider is sent away by his parents to Aligarh, a university town in north India, to shelter him from the violence overtaking Kashmir. The movie’s plot is set in motion when he returns to his homeland to search for his father, who has been abducted by the military. Through Haider’s search, the movie plunges into a looking-glass world, where lies and deception are common, and the government has abandoned human rights and the rule of law to crush the armed insurgency.” – Vaibhav Vats, The New York Times
Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director, MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Join Friends of Writers on October 26th at 7:00 PM ET for FOW Fall Fête, a celebration and fundraiser honoring the work of Friends of Writers in Hillsborough, North Carolina presented by FOW and House Party Reading Series. The evening will feature readings by alumni and faculty from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College including Sarah Audsley, Rita Banerjee, Megan Pinto, Carter Sickels, and Connie Voisine.
The event is free and open to the public. Limited edition broadsides made by Trish Marshall will be available for sale. Audio recording will be available after the event to registrants. RSVP required.
Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. She is the Writing Program Director at Vermont Studio Center.
Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is the author of the poetry collections Echo in Four Beats, which was named one of Book Riot’s “Must-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018,” and Cracklers at Night. She is also editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, and author of the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and her work appears in Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, VIDA, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Editor-at-Large of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop, and she is the co-writer and co-director of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France. She received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this new memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter from her new memoir, “The Female Gaze,” was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.
Megan Pinto’s debut collection, Saints of Little Faith, is forthcoming with Four Way Books in September 2024. The winner of the 2023 Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, Megan’s poems can be found or are forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Megan has received scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, Storyknife, The Peace Studio and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. She lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson. http://www.meganpinto.com
Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star (Hub City, 2020), winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Fiction, the Southern Book Prize, and the Weatherford Award, and selected as a Kirkus Best Book of 2020 and a Best LGBT Book by O Magazine. His debut novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury, 2012) was a Lambda Award and Triangle Publishing Award finalist, and adapted into a feature film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. His writing has appeared in publications including The Kenyon Review, The Atlantic, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, and Guernica. Carter has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and MacDowell. He is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. You can find more information at http://www.cartersickels.com.
Connie Voisine is the author of the recent book of poems, The Bower, begun on a Fulbright Fellowship to Northern Ireland. A previous book, Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her first book, Cathedral of the North, won the Associated Writing Program’s Award in Poetry. She has poems published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry Magazine, Black Warrior Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Educated at Yale University, University of California at Irvine, and University of Utah, Voisine directs the creative writing program at New Mexico State University and teaches in Warren Wilson College’s MFA for Writers. She was a 2021-2022 Guggenheim Fellow.
TheMFA Program for Writersrecently celebrated its annual summer residency at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina. The residency featured inspiring lectures and classes from both faculty and graduating students. And writers and readers can access the wonderful craft discussions and lectures from the MFA Program for Writers faculty online here. Rita Banerjee’s Opening Lecture, “Narrative Design from World Literature: the Kishōtenketsu and West African Griot Tradition,” explores how we can expand our craft knowledge and technique as writers by studying narrative design from world literature. The Japanese kishōtenketsu offers a new way to compose a poem or story beyond the Western emphasis on the plot triangle or Aristotelian idea of “plot is action.” Likewise, the West African Griot Tradition emphasizes the communal aspect of storytelling and notes the import of the storyteller and listener in the creation of a tale the sustains the history of a community and imagines its future. Some authors studied in the talk include Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, E.J. Koh, Ocean Vuong, Samuel Kọ́láwọ́lé, Yaa Gyasi, Teju Cole, and JJJJJerome Ellis.
The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 – July 2024, and can be accessed here: https://www.wwcmfa.org/store/
On August 13, the Bryant Park Reading Room (curated by Jason Schneiderman) will feature poets Rita Banerjee, Kate Gale, Erika Meitner, and Jason Schneiderman for a reading from 6:00-7:00 pm EDT.
Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is author of Disobedient Futures, CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, Echo in Four Beats, the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps, and Cracklers at Night. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA from the University of Washington. Her work appears in Hunger Mountain, Isele, Nat. Brut., Poets & Writers, Academy of American Poets, Los Angeles Review of Books, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She received a VAC Creation Grant for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this memoir, “Birth of Cool” was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter, “The Female Gaze,” was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.
Dr. Kate Gale is co-founder and publisher of Red Hen Press. She is the author of Under a Neon Sun from Three Rooms Press and The Loneliest Girl from the University of New Mexico Press and of seven books of poetry including The Goldilocks Zone and six librettos including Rio de Sangre, a libretto for an opera with composer Don Davis, which had its world premiere at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee. Her opera on Esther was written for the singer Hila Plitmann and is in process with the composer Mark Abel.
Erika Meitner is the author of six books of poems, including Useful Junk (BOA Editions, 2022), and Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018)–winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. Her poems have been published most recently in Electric Literature, Oxford American, The New Yorker, Orion, The New Republic, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Rumpus. Meitner is currently a professor of English and MFA program director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jason Schneiderman is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Hold Me Tight (Red Hen, 2020), and including the forthcoming Self Portrait of Icarus as a Country on Fire (Red Hen, 2024). He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford UP 2016). His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His awards include the Emily Dickinson Award, the Shestack Award and a Fulbright Fellowship. He is longtime co-host of the podcast Painted Bride Quarterly Slush Pile and a guest host for The Slowdown. He is Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Editors Rita Banerjee, Diana Norma Szokolyai, and Corrine Previte are delighted to share that their new speculative literature anthology Disobedient Futures has been acquired by University Press of Kentucky! Banerjee, Szokolyai, and Previte are delighted to be working with Editor Abby Freeland and her team including Alice Fugate Brown at University Press of Kentucky. Here’s a bit more about Disobedient Futures:
Rita Banerjee, Diana Norma Szokolyai, and Corrine Previte’s, ed’s, DISOBEDIENT FUTURES, a speculative literature anthology that imagines what the future cultures of America and the world might look like through a diverse, inclusive, and multi-genre lens, and includes fiction, poetry, nonfiction, hybrid work, art, and photography that explore utopian, dystopian, and alternative realities, futuristic places, and parallel histories to Abby Freeland at University Press of Kentucky (world).
Featured Authors:
George Abraham | Thommy Ahneesan | Kazim Ali | Kenzie Allen | Paul Daniel Ash | Madeleine Barnes | Rita Banerjee | Zeina Hashem Beck | Alyssa Beckitt | Oliver Baez Bendorf | Emma Bolden | Frances Cannon | Alex Carrigan | Marianne Chan | Kholoud Charaf | Marlena Chertock | Kristina Marie Darling | JJJJJerome Ellis | Ayokunle Falomo | Carlos Andrés Gómez | Dipika Guha | Robin Hemley | Candace Jensen | Shanta Lee | Shirley Jones-Luke | Ilya Kaminsky | Liz Kellebrew | Raphaël Amahl Khouri | Samuel Kọ́láwọlé | Oksana Marafioti | Adam McOmber | Sebastian Merrill | Rajiv Mohabir | Neha Mulay | Ukamaka Olisakwe | Matthew Olzmann | January Gill O’Neil | Josiah Patterson | Diana Norma Szokolyai | Corrine Previte | Ruben Quesada | Thaddeus Rutkowski | Nneka Samuel | Jason Schneiderman | Kyle Scott | Dayton Shafer | David Shields | Erin Stalcup | Margo Taft Stever | Bianca Stone | Anca L. Szilágyi | Brian Teare | Ella Voss | David Heska Wanbli Weiden | Cecilia Woloch
Rita Banerjee’s Hindi/English poem “एक रात में (One Night)” be part of “Time Capsule,” a collection of poems curated by writer and artist Candace Jensen , Emily Zervas, and Michelle Blake and created on a letterpress at the Ruth Stone House for the Putney Public Library. Some poets featured in the “Time Capsule” anthology include Candace Jensen, Ben Pease, Bianca Stone, Amanda Galvan Huynh, Mary Ruefle, Didi Jackson, Major Jackson, Rita Banerjee, and many others.
The reading and release parties for “Time Capsule” will take place on June 15 and July 13 at 1 pm EST at the Putney Public Library (55 Main Street, Putney, VT 05346). More information about Time Capsule and its book launch can be found in the Brattleboro Reformer here.
Copies of “Time Capsule” will be available for sale $50 cash or check to raise money for the library! Bigger donations are always welcome of course. The chapbook contents will be available as an eBook and of course available to borrow from the library! Read more about the “Time Capsule” anthology launch on the Putney Public Library website. And a video of the poem “One Night” can be viewed here:
Rita Banerjee’s poem “Sleep” is featured in “Bijou” Opening Reception at the 2024 Salem Arts Festival from June 7, 2024 – July 31, 2024. The “Bijou” World Poetry Collection is curated by poet Diana Norma Szokolyai and the Chagall Performing Arts Collaborative. You can visit the”Bijou” exhibit at the ChagallPAC / Cambridge Writers’ Workshop Studio at Artist’s Row, 24 New Derby Street, Salem, MA 01970 USA this weekend! More info follows below:
Join us on June 7, 2024 from 7-9 pm ESTfor our Opening Reception for “Bijou,” with live music and mingling.
ChagallPAC is delighted to announce a group exhibition titled “Bijou,” featuring the visual works of Ray Gilbert, Rachel Redux, Zenovia, Osmar K de Leon, Salem Fairy Forest, Diana Norma Sozokolyai, and Holy Crow. This exhibition will run from June 7 – July 31, 2024. Our opening Reception on June 7th will feature some of our artists in attendance, and live music by Victor Pachas.
BIJOU is desirable, sought-after, elegant. A jewel, a trinket, a treasure. Shaped by fingers, ornamental, delicate, prized workmanship. From haunting photos, dreamlike paintings, and bejeweled shrines, the selected works are modern treasure. Rare, handmade, and elegant.
Poets in Exhibition: Anonymous Rita Banerjee Shari Caplan Wang Chien Grace Harrington Murdoch Pete Murdoch Nancy Pantano Corrine Previte J.D. Scrimgeour Diana Norma Szokolyai Jezmina von Thiele Sophia Vassallo Dan Rice Jamie Spallino Maria Silvia Rodrigo Leaman
Rita Banerjee 