Tuesday, February 16
Session 2 3:00 pm PST 
Register here 

Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Reyna Grande 
Elizabeth Powell

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 2 – 3:00 pm PST

Stephanie Elizondo Griest 
All the Agents and Saints (UNC Press, paperback, 2020)

Reyna Grande 
A Dream Called Home: A Memoir (Atria Books, 2018)

Elizabeth Powell 
‘Atomizer’ (LSU Press, 2020) 
Concerning the Holy Ghost’s Interpretation of J. Crew Catalogues
(Leaky Boot Press, 2019)

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BIOGRAPHIES 

Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a globetrotting author from South Texas. Her five books include Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana; Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines; and All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands. As a correspondent for The Odyssey, she once drove 45,000 miles across the United States, documenting its history. She has won a Luce Scholarship to China, a Hodder Fellowship to Princeton, a Margolis Award for Social Justice Reporting, and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold Prize. Currently Associate Professor of Creative Nonfiction at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she has performed on five continents in capacities ranging from a Moth storyteller to a featured author of the International Writing Program. 

Read Abbie Reese's interview "Ghosts in the Borderlands: A Conversation with Stephanie Elizondo Griest” in LA Review of Books   

Reyna Grande
Reyna Grande is the author of two memoirs, The Distance Between Us and the much-anticipated sequel, A Dream Called Home; and two novels, Across a Hundred Mountains and Dancing with Butterflies, which were published to critical acclaim. Writing about immigration, family separation, language trauma, the price of the American Dream, and her writing journey, Reyna’s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, CNN, The Lily at The Washington Post, and Buzzfeed, among others.

Elizabeth Powell 
Elizabeth A.I. Powell is the author of three books of poems, including the forthcoming, ATOMIZER (LSU Press, 2020). Her second book of poems, Willy Loman’s Reckless Daughter: Living Truthfully Under Imaginary Circumstances  was named a “Books We Love 2016” by The New Yorker.  Her novel, Concerning the Holy Ghost's Interpretation of J. Crew Catalogues, was published in 2019 in the U.K. 

Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Pushcart Prize Anthology, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cortland Review, Colorado Review, Ecotone, Electric Literature, Forklift, Ohio, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Seneca Review, Ploughshares, Plume, West Branch, and elsewhere. 

She is Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor of Green Mountains Review, and Associate Professor and Chair of Writing and Literature at Northern Vermont University-Johnson. She also serves on the faculty of the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Omaha.In 2020, she will be Distinguished Visiting Faculty at the Oregon State University-Bend MFA program. 

My Community
Powell has lived in Vermont since 1989, first in Bethel and now in Underhill. She was born on Lenox Hill in NYC, and was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Vermont College of Fine Arts, and the University of New Hampshire.

Follow Me on Social Media
Instagram at elizabethpowell9456 & on twitter at #astriditkin & on Facebook at Elizabeth Powell 

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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
• 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