Writers Week is the longest-running, free literary event in California and features the most renowned authors of our day alongside those at the start of promising careers. writersweek.ucr.edu

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

Director, Writers Week

Distinguished Professor

Department of Creative Writing / School of Medicine-Medical Humanities

Tom Lutz 

Publisher, Los Angeles Review of Books 

Distinguished Professor 

Department of Creative Writing

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February 12 & 14 - 18, 2022

ONLINE. Free and open to the public. 

Captioned & ASL interpreted.

Full 2022 Schedule 

Post-Festival Ticketed Event on February 19 with Los Angeles Review of Books

Download the Interactive 44th Writers Week Poster here

Download the Interactive Lifetime Achievement Award Honorees Poster here

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Friday, February 18

• SESSION 2: 3:00 p.m. PST Jasmine Elizabeth Smith, Daisy Hernandez, Joy Castro

Jasmine Elizabeth Smith (jasmineelizabethsmith.com)

South Flight (Winner of the Georgia Prize)

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Jasmine Elizabeth Smith (she/her) is a Black poet from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She received her MFA in Poetry from the University of California in Riverside. She is a Cave Canem Fellow and a recipient of the Glucks Art Fellowship. Jasmine Elizabeth’s poetic work is invested in the Diaspora of Black Americans in various historical contexts and eras. It has been featured in Black Renaissance Noir, POETRY,
World Literature Today, LA Review of Books among others. She was a finalist for the 2020 National Poetry Series and the winner of the 2020 Georgia Poetry Prize. Her collection South Flight is forthcoming with the University of Georgia Press in early spring of 2022.

Daisy Hernandez (daisyhernandez.com)

The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease

Publisher: Tin House

Daisy Hernández is the author of The Kissing Bug: A True Story of a Family, an Insect, and a Nation’s Neglect of a Deadly Disease and the award-winning memoir A Cup of Water Under My Bed. She is also the coeditor of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism and an Associate Professor in creative writing at Miami University in Ohio.

Joy Castro (joycastro.com)

Flight Risk

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Joy Castro is the award-winning author of the new novel Flight Risk, the post-Katrina New Orleans literary thrillers Hell or High Water, which received the Nebraska Book Award, and Nearer Home, and the story collection How Winter Began, as well as the memoir The Truth Book and the essay collection Island of Bones, which received the International Latino Book Award. Her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Senses of Cinema, Salon, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Brevity, Afro-Hispanic Review, and elsewhere. A former Writer-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University, she is currently the Willa Cather Professor of English and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

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The 45th Writers Week 2022 is made possible by support from:

Inland Empire Magazine, UCR Department of Ethnic Studies, UCR Department of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production, Center for Ideas and Society, Dr. Melissa Wilcox, Professor and Holstein Endowed Chair, Dr. Michael Alexander, Professor and Maimonides Chair in Jewish Studies, Pr. Alex Espinoza, Associate Professor, Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing and English, Distinguished Professor, UCR Department of Music, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, California Center for Native Nations, Dr. Clifford Trafzer, Distinguished Professor of History and Rupert and Jeanette Henry Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs, UCR ARTS, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Dean’s Office, Native American Student Programs Office (NASP), Joshua Gonzales, Director, the Ratcliffe Family Creative Writing Endowment Fund, Los Angeles Review of Books, and our great Giving Tuesday donors!

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Information: writersweek@ucr.edu & allisonh@ucr.edu