Wednesday, February 17
Session 2 - 3:00 pm PST 
Register here

Kazim Ali
Jane Smiley
LeAnne Howe

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE
Department of Creative Writing

44th Annual Writers Week Festival 2021

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Writers Week director
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

Tom Lutz 
Publisher, Los Angeles Review of Books 
UCR Creative Writing Department Chair 
Distinguished Professor 

_____________________________

February 13 and 16-19, 2021
ONLINE. Free and open to the public. 
Captioned & ASL translated.
February 20 Post-festival ticketed celebration with our Lifetime Achievement Award partner LA Review of Books. Learn more

Download the Interactive Lifetime Achievement Award Honorees Poster here

Download the Interactive 44th Writers Week Poster here
_____________________________

Rita Dove, Joy Harjo and Juan Felipe Herrera

2021 LA Review of Books (LARB) – UCR Department of Creative Writing 
Lifetime Achievement Award Honorees, US Poet Laureates

Mike Davis – D. Charles Whitney Reader 
Karen Tei Yamashita – Stephen Minot Lecture

44th UCR Writers Week Featured Writers 
Millicent Borges Accardi • Kazim Ali • Francisco Aragón • Joseph Cassara • Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle • Camille T. Dungy • Carolyn Dunn • Steve Erickson • Kelli Jo Ford • Reyna Grande • Stephanie Elizondo Griest • Nalo Hopkinson • LeAnne Howe • John Jennings • Stephen Graham Jones • Laila Lalami • Brandy Nālani McDougall • Shin Yu Pai • Craig Santos Perez • Tommy Pico • Elizabeth Powell • Kamala Puligandla • Alison C. Rollins • Jane Smiley • Michael Torres • Melissa Valentine • Allison Benis White

_____________________________

SCHEDULE 
Wednesday, Feb 17
Session  2 – 3:00 pm PST

Kazim Ali 
Northern Light: Power, Land, and the Memory of Water (Milkweed Editions, 2021)
Kazim Ali, UC San Diego 
Kazim Ali, The Field Office 
Kazim Ali, Barnes & Noble

Jane Smiley 
Taking the Reins (Knopf for Young Readers, 2020) 
& Perestroika in Paris (Knopf, 2020) 
Jane Smiley, Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau 
Jane Smiley, UC Riverside 

LeAnne Howe 
Savage Conversations (Coffee House Press, 2019) 
Famine Pots: The Choctaw Irish Gift Exchange 1847-Present, Michigan State University Press (2020)
When The Light of The World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020)
Searching for Sequoyah (forthcoming documentary film)
LeAnne Howe, University of Georgia

_____________________________

BIOGRAPHIES 

Kazim Ali  
Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, includingthe volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. After a career in public policy and organizing, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light. 

Jane Smiley 
A Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, essayist, and biographer, Jane Smiley is the author of more than twenty fiction and nonfiction books. A jack-of-all-trades, Smiley is a sought-after and flexible lecturer who speaks on a wide variety of topics, including politics, farming, child rearing, and literature. 

During her years as a published author—her first novel was published in 1980—two of Jane Smiley’s novels have been made into movies: A Thousand Acres, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, and The Age of Grief, which was developed into The Secret Lives of Dentists.

The recipient of an MFA and a Ph.D., Jane Smiley is the author of twelve novels, as well as many essays for such magazines as Vogue, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Practical Horseman, and others. She has been a Fulbright Scholar (a year in Iceland) and was a professor of English for 15 years at Iowa State University, where she taught creative writing workshops at the undergraduate and graduate level. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2001, and in 2006 she was awarded the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature.

LeAnne Howe 
LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma and the author of novels, plays and poetry, and screenplays. She is the on-camera narrator for a 90-minute PBS documentary, Indian Country Diaries, Spiral of Fire, and producer/writer for the 56-minute Searching for Sequoyah, airing in 2021, her third film collaboration with Ojibway filmmaker and director James M. Fortier. Awards include: the American Book Award, Western Literature Association’s 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award; the inaugural 2014 MLA Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures; and a 2012 United States Artists Ford Fellowship, among others. During the Arab Spring, 2010-2011, Howe was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Jordan, Amman. Her book, Savage Conversations, Coffee House Press, (2019) is the story of Mary Todd Lincoln and the Savage Indian that Mary claimed tortured her nightly in 1875, which has been staged as a play in NYC, Seattle, and in Athens, GA. Two major anthologies released in August are: Famine Pots: The Choctaw Irish Gift Exchange 1847-Present, Michigan State University Press, released in August 2020 co-edited by Howe and Irish scholar, Padraig Kirwan; and, When The Light of The World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, the ground breaking anthology covering two centuries of Native poetry, edited by U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, LeAnne Howe, and Jennifer Elise Foerster. She is at work on a new book set in Stonewall, Oklahoma. 

_____________________________

The 44th Writers Week 2021 is made possible by support from Ken Crocker, Inland Empire Magazine, Thea Temple / Jack and Jacob Myers Literary Fund, Riverside Latino Network, African Student Programs, Middle Eastern Student Center, UCR Department of English, UCR Department of Ethnic Studies, UCR Department of Music, UCR Department of Theatre, Film, and Digital Production, Center for Ideas and Society, California Center for Native Nations, Dr. Michael Alexander, Associate Professor and Maimonides Chair of Jewish Studies, Dr. Melissa Wilcox, Professor and Holstein Endowed Chair, Pr. Alex Espinoza, Associate Professor, Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing and English, Distinguished Professor, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, 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, our generous sponsors through #UCRGivingTues donors, Native American Student Programs Office (NASP), Joshua Gonzales, Director, the Ratcliffe Family Creative Writing Endowment Fund and Los Angeles Review of Books.

#UCRGivingTues* donors include: Mark O. Bailie, Melissa A. Bartholomew, Katherine Benouar, Kathleen DeAtley, Clyde D. Derrick III, Terri L. Dunlap, Pr. Alex Espinoza, Diana Fontaine, Katherine K. Fugate, Jeffrey J. Girod, Kimberly V. Gomez-Fraser, Pr. Allison Hedge Coke, Travis B. Hedge Coke, Dr. Laila Lalami, Malinn C. Loeung, Michael Lundell, Jennifer Merrett, Heather M. Morales, LaSharon A. McLean Perez, Cati Porter, Rachel L. Pulido, Assistant Vice Chancellor Emily M. Rankin and Eveleen D. Samayoa.

Book purchases
A hyperlink is now available for all attendees to purchase books from our own campus B & N bookstore here. Cellar Door Books is our recommended local independent store. Be sure to stop by their page.

Information: writersweek@ucr.edu 

• FB UCR Writers Week
• FB UCR Writers Resist
• IG @ucrwritersweek 
• Twitter @ucrwritersweek 
• Twitter #ucrwritersresist  

Click here to read UC Riverside's statement of support for Black Lives Matter and Native Land Recognitions. 

View the 44th Writers Week Events Calendar Directory here