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Gregory Grosvenor grew up in Ansbach, Germany. He moved to the US, earning an MFA from ��������. For two decades, he has taught writing and literature at various colleges in Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts. Grosvenor currently lives in Somerville, Massachusetts with his three cats, Dinah, Theo, and Bramlet Abercrombie. Second Pocket First is his debut novel.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Monday Oct. 6 - MFA Alumni and Student Readings, 12:00 PM, University Theatre

January Gill O'Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University and the author of Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. Glitter Road won the Poetry by the Sea Award and was a finalist for the 2024 New England Book Award and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, The Nation, Poetry, and Sierra magazine, among others. Her poem, "At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial," was a co-winner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award from the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O'Neil was the 2019-2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She currently serves as the 2022-2025 board chair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP). 

O'Neil earned her BA from �������� and her MFA from New York University. She lives in Beverly, MA.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Monday Oct. 6 - MFA Alumni and Student Readings, 12:00 PM, University Theatre

Dr. Elizabeth “Barry” White is a professional historian and an expert on the Holocaust, World War II, genocide, and international criminal justice. She has directed research to investigate and prosecute Nazi criminals and other human rights violators for the U.S. Department of Justice, serving as Deputy Director and Chief Historian of the Office of Special Investigations and Deputy Chief and Chief Historian of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section. At the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, she has served as the Research Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide and as a historian in the Division of the Senior Historian. 

Together with Dr. Joanna Sliwa, Dr. White has authored The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles during the Holocaust (Simon & Schuster, 2024). She is also the author of German Influence in the Argentine Army, 1900-1945 (Garland, 1991), as well as numerous articles, official reports, and papers on Holocaust crimes, U.S. intelligence employment of Nazi criminals, and efforts to achieve accountability for international crimes. For the U.S. State Department, she traced gold looted from Nazi victims -- including gold teeth -- to the postwar accounts of European central banks, leading to the establishment of an international assistance fund for Holocaust survivors. For the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, she produced Defusing Hate: A Strategic Communication Guide to Counteract Dangerous Speech, a tool for countering the impact of hate speech that can lead to genocide and mass atrocities. Dr. White has given numerous public talks and interviews on the Holocaust, genocide prevention, and the quest for justice for Nazi crimes. For more information see: . 

Speaker's Itinerary

• Monday Oct. 6 - 1:30 PM, University Theatre

Ariana Benson’s debut poetry collection, Black Pastoral (University of Georgia Press, 2023) won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize, and the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Leonard Prize and the Library of Virginia Prize Award. A southern Black ecopoet, Benson’s work  has received fellowships & awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Furious Flower, the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, and others. Benson is a proud alumna of Spelman College, where she facilitates creative writing and storytelling workshops for HBCU students. 

Speaker's Itinerary

• Monday Oct. 6 - 3:00 PM, University Theatre

Lauren Oyler is the author of the essay collection No Judgment and the novel Fake Accounts. Her essays and criticism appear regularly in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The London Review of Books, and many other publications, and she is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. She was born in West Virginia and lives in Berlin. 

Speaker's Itinerary

• Monday Oct. 6 - 2025 Edith and Forrest P. White Writer in Residence, 7:00 PM, University Theatre

Kristen Renee Miller is the director and editor-in-chief at. An award-winning poet and translator, she is a 2023 NEA Fellow and the translator of two books from the French by Ilnu Nation poet Marie-Andrée Gill. She is the recipient of honors from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, AIGA, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Gulf Coast Prize in Translation, and the American Literary Translators Association. Her work can be found widely, including in Poetry Magazine, The Nation, and Best New Poets. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Tuesday Oct. 7 - 12:30 PM, mpark
• Tuesday Oct. 7 - 3:00 PM, University Theatre

Annabelle Tometich (tomma-titch) went from medical-school reject to line cook to journalist to author. She spent 18 years as a food writer and restaurant critic for The News-Press in her hometown of Fort Myers, Florida. Her first book, “” (Little, Brown; April 2024) was called “sweet, sharp” by The New York Times, and was named among the best books of 2024 by The Washington Post and NPR. 

Tometich has written for The Washington Post, USA Today, Catapult, and many more outlets. In 2025, thanks to "The Mango Tree," she became the first Filipino American author to win the Southern Book Prize for nonfiction. Tometich – still – lives in Fort Myers with her husband, two children, and her ever-fiery Filipina mother.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Tuesday Oct. 7 - 4:30 PM, University Theatre

Crystal Wilkinson, a recent recipient of a Writing Freedom fellowship, is the award-winning author of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, a national-bestselling culinary memoir, Perfect Black, a collection of poems, and three works of fiction—The Birds of Opulence, Water Street and Blackberries, Blackberries. She is the recipient of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Poetry, an O. Henry Prize, an Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a USA Artists Fellowship, and an Ernest J. Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence. She has received recognition from the Yaddo Foundation, Hedgebrook, The Vermont Studio Center for the Arts, The Hermitage Foundation and others. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including most recently in The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Agni Literary Journal, Emergence, Oxford American and Southern Cultures.  She was Poet Laureate of Kentucky from 2021 to 2023. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of Kentucky where she is a Bush-Holbrook Endowed Professor and Director of the Division of Creative Writing. Her memoir Heartsick is forthcoming from Crown.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Tuesday Oct. 7 - 7:00 PM, University Theatre
• Wednesday Oct. 8 - Workshop, 12:00 PM, Baron & Ellin Gordon Art Galleries

Princess Joy L. Perry earned an MFA in Creative Writing from ��������, where she is currently a master lecturer of composition, literature, and creative writing. Her work appeared most recently in Sing the Truth: The Kweli Journal Short Story Collection, and formerly in African American Review, Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly and All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color. She is a past finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award in Fiction, a recipient of a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship, and a winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award. In August of this year , W.W. Norton released her debut novel, This Here is Love.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Wednesday Oct. 8 - Faculty Reading, 3:00 PM, University Theatre

Tim Seibles, the former Poet Laureate of Virginia, was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He is the author of several books of poetry including Hurdy-Gurdy, Hammerlock, and Buffalo Head Solos. His first collection, Body Moves, (1988) was re-released by the Carnegie Mellon University Press as part of their Contemporary Classics series. Fast Animal was one of five poetry finalists for the 2012 National Book Award. In 2013 he received the Pen Oakland Josephine Miles Award for poetry. In 2014 Tim received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Misericordia University for his literary accomplishments. During that same year, he won the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award for Fast Animal, a prize given triennially for a collection of poems. In 2015, he chaired the panel of judges that decided the winner of the National Book Award in poetry. One Turn Around the Sun was published in 2017. His most recent collection, Voodoo Libretto: New & Selected Poems, was released in 2022. He has been a workshop leader for Cave Canem, a writer’s retreat for African American poets, and for the Hurston/Wright Foundation, another organization dedicated to developing black writers. Tim Seibles lives in Norfolk and is now an Emeritus Professor of English at ��������.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Wednesday Oct. 8 - Musical Event, 4:30 PM, University Theatre

Chris Brydge is a freelance bassist, educator, composer and band leader who has been performing in and around the greater Tidewater area of Virginia since 1994. He earned his bachelors degree in Music Education from �������� in 2000. He taught in the Virginia public school system as an orchestra director for thirteen years and as an adjunct jazz bass professor at William and Mary College and Christopher Newport University. For over 20 years he has had the pleasure of being a member of the Virginia Symphony Jazz Orchestra, Roy Muth Big Band and Eddie Williams Quartet. You can also find him performing with his own ensembles, Left of Center, the Chris Brydge trio/ quartet, Liz Terrell Quartet and as part of the bass and voice duo Liz & Brydge.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Wednesday Oct. 8 - Musical Event, 4:30 PM, University Theatre

Tony Tulathimutte is the author of Private Citizens and Rejection. A graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he’s received a Whiting Award and an O. Henry Award, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and has written for The Paris Review, N+1, The New York Times, Playboy, The Nation, and others. He also runs CRIT, a writing class in Brooklyn.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Wednesday Oct. 8 - 7:00 PM, University Theatre

Kindra McDonald Greene is the author of the collections Teaching a Wild Thing, Fossils and In the Meat Years. She was the recipient of the 2020 Haunted Waters Press Poetry Award and has been nominated for Bettering American Poetry and a Pushcart Prize. She received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. A poet artist working in mixed-media, found poetry, and ecopoetics she’s a Teaching Artist at The Muse Writers Center and the Executive Director of the Elizabeth River Trail Foundation in Norfolk, VA. She served as the Poetry Society of Virginia Southeastern region VP from 2019-2022. You can find her in the woods or at 

Speaker's Itinerary

• Thursday Oct. 9 - Workshop, 12:30 PM, Elizabeth River Trail
• Thursday Oct. 9 - 3:30 PM, In front of Webb Center

Erika Howsare's first nonfiction book, The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors, was published in 2024 by Catapult Books. She previously published two books of poetry and has worked in local journalism for more than twenty years. Her reviews, interviews and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Orion, the Los Angeles Review of Books, LongReads, the Boston Review, and many other outlets. With Tyler Carter, she created an award-winning podcast miniseries, If You See a Deer. She holds an MFA in writing from Brown University and lives in central Virginia, where she teaches writing privately.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Thursday Oct. 9 - 2:00 PM, In front of Webb Center

JJJJJerome Ellis (any pronoun) is a disabled Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist, surfer, and person who stutters. The artist works across music, performance, writing, video, and photography. JJJJJerome has the great privilege of being married to poet-ecologist Luísa Black Ellis. They live in a monastery on a creek in traditional Chesapeake and Nansemond territory, in Norfolk, VA. JJJJJerome dreams of building a sonic bath house!

Speaker's Itinerary

• Thursday Oct. 9 - 3:30 PM, In front of Webb Center

Shadows of the Imagination is a competitive, literary-themed game jam hosted by the Monarch Institute for Game Design and Development. Participants have two weeks to design story-based games that correspond to the theme of the game jam. Prizes will be awarded for the best games in each category. For more information or to sign up, visit: 

Speaker's Itinerary

• Thursday Oct. 9 - 4:30 PM, Monarch Hall 2116

The Great Filipino American ASWANG Pageant: A Theatrical Performance
Purchase tickets at .

Navigate a world filled with fantastical creatures and heartwarming camaraderie while uncovering the true meaning of identity and self-discovery. This groundbreaking production defies expectations as it weaves together mythology, camp, and high-stakes pageantry with music and scandal! This unique production is a collaboration between playwright Kat Stevens, creative lead Philip Odango, ROŪGE: Theatre Reinvented, and ��������Rep.

Filipino Market

Before and after the performance, experience a lively Filipino Market featuring local vendors, traditional foods, and handmade goods. Celebrate community and culture through flavor, craft, and connection.

Talkback: Aswang: Mythic Monsters and the Magic of the Page

A talkback and reception will immediately follow the performance around 8:30pm ending at 9:30pm at the �������� University Theatre.

Filipino folklore teems with chilling, captivating creatures—and none slither more hauntingly into the literary imagination than the aswang. Shapeshifter and soul-stealer, the aswang is more than myth—it’s metaphor, cultural memory, and untamed possibility. From whispered warnings in rural villages to high-octane graphic novels and reimagined diasporic tales, these monsters continue to evolve, demanding to be read, feared, and understood.

In this spellbinding conversation, we dive into how stories of the aswang transcend generations and formats—becoming rituals of remembrance, coded social commentary, and cinematic page-turners. This panel unpacks the ways Filipino horror slips between art and activism, magic and media. Their work conjures not just monsters, but maps of myth: guides for identity, rebellion, and belonging, when imagination merges with ancestral shadow, and the written word is not only warning, but wonder.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Thursday Oct. 9 - 7:30 PM, University Theatre

Remica Bingham-Risher, a native of Phoenix, Arizona, is a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. She is the author of Conversion (Lotus, 2006), What We Ask of Flesh (Etruscan, 2013), adapted into an immersive dance and installation work by INSPIRIT Dance Company, and Starlight & Error (Diode, 2017). Her memoir, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions That Grew Me Up, was published by Beacon Press (2022). Her newest book, Room Swept Home (Wesleyan, 2024) is a finalist for the Library of Virginia Award, was chosen as an Honor Poetry Book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA), and won the L.A. Times Book Prize. She is the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at �������� in Norfolk, VA, where she resides with her husband and children. 

Speaker's Itinerary

• Friday Oct. 10 - What We Ask of Flesh, 7:00 PM, Attucks Theatre (1010 Church Street)

Christal Brown is the founder of INSPIRIT, a dance company, and Project: BECOMING. Brown earned a BFA in Dance and a minor in Business from UNC-Greensboro, and an MFA in New Media Art and technology from Long Island Univ. She performed with Chuck Davis’ African-American Dance Ensemble, Andrea E. Woods/Souloworks and Gesel Mason Performance Projects, and apprenticed with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. Upon moving to NYC, Brown apprenticed with The Bill T. Jones/Arnie ZaneDance Co. before joining Urban Bush Women as a principal performer, community specialist and apprentice program coordinator. In 2018, after performing with Bebe Miller Company, Brown achieved a personal and professional milestone of dancing her way through the African diaspora.

Speaker's Itinerary

• Friday Oct. 10 - What We Ask of Flesh, 7:00 PM, Attucks Theatre (1010 Church Street)