Tuesday, February 16
Session 1 - 1:00 pm PST 
Register here

Kelli Jo Ford
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
Alison C. Rollins

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 

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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
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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
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SCHEDULE 
Tuesday, Feb 16
Session 1 – 1:00 pm PST

Kelli Jo Ford 
Crooked Hallelujah (Grove Atlantic, 2020) 

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle 
Even as We Breathe (University Press of Kentucky, 2020) 

Alison C. Rollins 
Librarian/Poet
Library of Small Catastrophes (Copper Canyon, 2019)

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BIOGRAPHIES 

Kelli Jo Ford
These days, I live in Virginia with my husband (and poet extraordinaire) Scott Weaver, daughter Cypress, and dog Sylvia Plath Weaver-Ford. Crooked Hallelujah, my debut novel-in-stories about four generations of Cherokee women, is out now with Grove Press. In addition to my work as a freelance writer and editor, I teach fiction at Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts Low Residency MFA program.

“Hybrid Vigor,” a story from Crooked Hallelujah, won The Paris Review’s 2019 Plimpton Prize, and the manuscript for Crooked Hallelujah won the University of Central Oklahoma’s 2019 Everett Southwest Literary Award. I've been awarded a National Artist Fellowship by the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, an Elizabeth George Foundation Emerging Artist Grant, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, and a Katharine Bakeless Nason Award in Fiction by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In 2016, I served as the Indigenous Writer-in-Residence at School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe. I received an MFA from George Mason University. 

I have work published or forthcoming in The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, and Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, among other places. I'm a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and I'm pretty stoked to say that I'm represented by Adam Eaglin at The Cheney Agency. 

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle 
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI) resides in Qualla, NC. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe (The University Press of Kentucky) is scheduled to release fall of 2020. Her first novel manuscript, Going to Water is winner of The Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium (2012), a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (2014). After serving as Executive Director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Annette (National Board Certified since 2012) returned to teaching English and Cherokee Studies at Swain County High School. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network.

Alison C. Rollins 
Alison C. Rollins holds a Bachelor of Science (summa cum laude & phi beta kappa) in Psychology from Howard University and a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Born and raised in St. Louis city, she currently works as the Lead Teaching and Learning Librarian for Colorado College. She also serves as faculty for Pacific Northwest College of Art's Low-Residency MFA. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review, The New York Times Magazine, The Poetry Review, and elsewhere. A Cave Canem and Callaloo fellow, she is also a 2016 recipient of the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. Rollins has most recently been awarded support from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and is a recipient of a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature fellowship as well as a 2018 Rona Jaffe Writers' Award. A 2020 Pushcart Prize winner, her debut poetry collection Library of Small Catastrophes (Copper Canyon Press) is out now! 

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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
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• 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