Past Events

International Writers Series: Baba Badji

In this virtual reading and discussion, Baba Badji will present his recently published first collection of poems, Ghost Letters. Badji is a Senegalese-American poet, translator, researcher, and PhD candidate in Comparative Literature. Ghost Letters creates a ghost mother who becomes a presiding presence. His poetry explores what it means to be Senegalese, American, and Black, as well as the bonds of Black people across the Black diaspora.

WashU Libraries Virtual Book Club: ‘Fever’

At first glance, the story of Mary Mallon seems like a model of the so-called American Dream. As an Irish immigrant at the turn of the twentieth century, she worked her way up from theposition of a domestic servant to working as a cook to several elite New York families. But the trail of disease she left in her wake led to the moniker by which she is famous: Typhoid Mary.

In this novel, author Mary Beth Keane sets out to tell the story of Mary Mallon—headstrong and independent—set against the vibrant landscape of early twentieth-century New York. Free and open to all. 

WashU Libraries Virtual Book Club: ‘Marcel’s Letters’

A true story of graphic designer Carolyn Porter, who stumbled across a bundle of letters while searching antique stores for inspiration to create a new font. As she struggled to design the font, she searched for information about the man who had written these letters during World War II and clues to what had become of him.

Book club will begin with a showcase of typography in the rare book collections, followed by a discussion of the book. Free and open to all. 

Book Launch for "Andrew Marvell: A Literary Life" by Alum Matthew Augustine

Matthew Augustine graduated with his PhD in English & American Literature in December 2009. He is now Senior Lecturer in English at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. His forthcoming book Andrew Marvell: A Literary Life is published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of its subject’s birth.

Join us to hear Dr. Augustine in conversation with Dr. Giulio Pertile, and enter into a discussion of the varied career of this poet, satirist and politician.

The Making of A Whole World: Letters from James Merrill

Esteemed American poet James Merrill wrote thousands of letters in his lifetime, to hundreds of recipients. Joel Minor, Curator of the Modern Literature Collection at Washington University Libraries where the James Merrill Papers reside, moderates a discussion with four panelists about how these letters were aggregated and organized for a book of Merrill’s selected letters (Knopf 2021).

The book’s co-editors, Langdon Hammer, the Niel Gray, Jr. Professor of English at Yale University, and Stephen Yenser, Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA, will be joined by Chelsie Malyszek, Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at Hampden-Sydney College, and Tim Young, Curator of Modern Books and Manuscripts at Yale University’s Beinecke Library, both of whom played major roles in these efforts.

The event includes an audience Q&A and book sales from the Washington University Campus Store. Event co-sponsored by the James Merrill House.

Virtual Book Club: ‘People of the Book’

When asked to conserve the priceless and famed Sarajevo Haggadah, Hannah Heath jumps at the chance to work with the beautiful Jewish text. She unlocks the books mysteries and past through her conservation work, learning about the extraordinary illuminations, the Catholic priest who saved it from burning, and the man who risked his life to save the book from the Bosnian war.

Special guest Danielle Creech, head of preservation, digitization, and exhibitions, will give a brief presentation on conservation and preservation at WashU and lead discussion of the novel.

Free and open to all.

Guest Speaker G'Ra Asim with Jabari Asim - Boyz n the Void

About Boyz n the Void

Writing to his brother, G'Ra Asim reflects on building his own identity while navigating Blackness, masculinity, and young adulthood--all through wry social commentary and music/pop culture critique.

How does one approach Blackness, masculinity, otherness, and the perils of young adulthood? For G'Ra Asim, punk music offers an outlet to express himself freely. As his younger brother, Gyasi, grapples with finding his footing in the world, G'Ra gifts him with a survival guide for tackling the sometimes treacherous cultural terrain particular to being young, Black, brainy, and weird in the form of a mixtape.

Boyz n the Void: a mixtape to my brother blends music and cultural criticism and personal essay to explore race, gender, class, and sexuality as they pertain to punk rock and straight edge culture. Using totemic punk rock songs on a mixtape to anchor each chapter, the book documents an intergenerational conversation between a Millennial in his 30s and his Generation Z teenage brother. Author, punk musician, and straight edge kid, G'Ra Asim weaves together memoir and cultural commentary, diving into the depths of everything from theory to comic strips, to poetry to pizza commercials to mapping the predicament of the Black creative intellectual.

With each chapter dedicated to a particular song and placed within the context of a fraternal bond, Asim presents his brother with a roadmap to self-actualization in the form of a Doc Martened foot to the behind and a sweaty, circle-pit-side-armed hug.

About the Speakers

G'Ra Asim, a writer and musician, is an assistant professor of nonfiction writing at Ithaca College. He holds an MFA in nonfiction from Columbia University and a BA in writing, literature and publishing from Emerson College. He has served as writing director at the African American Policy Forum and as graduate teaching fellow in Columbia's Undergraduate Writing Program. His work has appeared in Slate, Salon, Guernica, The Baffler, and The New Republic. When not writing prose or teaching, he sings, plays bass and writes lyrics for NYC DIY pop punk band babygotbacktalk, who were named one of Afropunk's Top 8 Punkest Bands on the Planet Right Now.

Jabari Asim is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Creative Arts and the author of seven books for adults-including We Can't Breathe: On Black Lives, White Lies, and the Art of Survival-and ten books for children. His poems are included in several anthologies, including Furious Flower: African American Poetry from the Black Arts Movement to the Present; Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry for the 21st Century; and Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. After more than a decade at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and The Washington Post, he now directs the MFA program at Emerson College.

Scholarly Writing Retreat 2021

The Scholarly Writing Retreat offers Washington University humanities and humanistic social sciences faculty, post-docs and graduate students the opportunity to jump-start their summer writing in a motivated, supportive and collaborative atmosphere, even as we are spread out in our own work spaces. Participants will work intensively on their individual projects, following a schedule of check-ins, focused writing periods and virtual communal breaks. 

Online meetings 

Small writing groups meet online periodically to provide a forum to exchange ideas, support one another and engage in social interaction. Each group will determine their own structure: frequency and duration of writing days/times, which virtual platform to use, types of meetings, etc.

Dates 

Weekdays, June 1–11
^{Participants are not required to participate daily nor to attend the entire duration of the retreat.}

How to participate

1. Register by clicking the button below by noon on May 20.
2. Await your small group assignment, to be made by the end of May, based on your registration responses.
3. Join the online welcome session on June 1 at 10 am. Each group will then meet to determine their plans going forward.

International Writers Series: Mary Jo Bang

In this virtual reading and discussion, Mary Jo Bang will present her recent translation of Dante’s Purgatorio. Mary Jo Bang is a nationally recognized author of eight books of poems and professor of English here at Washington University in St. Louis. Her adaptation of Purgatorio is the extraordinary continuation of her journey with Dante, which began with her transformative version of Inferno. In her signature lyric style, accompanied by her wise and exuberant notes, Bang has produced a stunning translation of this fourteenth-century text, rich with references that span time, languages, and cultures. Bang will be joined in discussion by Aaron Coleman, PhD student in Comparative Literature and fellow poet and translator.

Joy Williams Reading & Celebration