We are pleased to announce distinguished authors Carmen Maria Machado, Stephanie Burt, and Jennifer Bartell Boykin '05 will be on campus on April 3-4, 2025, for Agnes Scott College’s 54th Annual Writers’ Festival, the oldest continuous literary event in Georgia.

Schedule:

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

5:00 p.m - 6:30 p.m: Writers' Festival: Student Finalists Reading
The Center for Writing and Speaking is pleased to host the 53rd Annual Writers' Festival student finalists for readings of their work, as well as the launch of this year's magazine!  As with all all other Writers' Festival programming, this event is free and all are welcome to attend.

Location: Alston Campus Center, AL-Luchsinger Lounge

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

2:00 p.m - 3:30 p.m: Literary Tea at McCain
"What better way to start the 54th Writer's Festival than celebrating women authors with a Literary Tea inspired by Jane Austen's 250th anniversary? This drop-in event will feature regency-themed activities, some light refreshments befitting afternoon tea, and a cozy space for literary discussion. The event aims to highlight both Jane Austen's legacy and the visiting authors featured in the Writer's Festival."

Location: McCain Library, Library Instruction Room 211

Thursday, April 3, 2025

1:00 p.m - 2:00 p.m: Writers' Festival: Q&A
The 54th Writers’ Festival guests Stephanie Burt, Carmen Maria Machado, and Jennifer Bartell Boykin '05 gather with students and other attendees of the festival for a casual Q&A discussion of their work. As with all all other Writers' Festival programming, this event is free and all are welcome to attend.

Location: Alston Campus Center, AL-Luchsinger Lounge

4:00 p.m - 5:30 p.m: Writers' Festival: Reading by Stephanie Burt
This event is free and open to the public. No registration or rsvp required!

Location: Dana Fine Arts Building, Winter Theater

8:00 p.m - 9:15 p.m: Writers' Festival Keynote: Carmen Maria Machado
Carmen Maria Machado’s writing defies and blends genres such as surrealism, fantasy, and horror to create writing that is so palpable it seems alive. Her work has been compared to that of Shirley Jackson, Kelly Link and Angela Carter, but with a voice that is uniquely her own. Growing up in a household where storytelling was always present, Carmen has been writing her whole life. She learned about stories through reading, as well as oral tradition in her family. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Guggenheim Foundation, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Carmen is the author of the bestselling memoir In the Dream House, the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods, and the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of "The New Vanguard," one of "15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century." Her essays, fiction, and criticism have appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Granta, Vogue, This American Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Tin House, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Believer, Guernica, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere. Carmen lives in Iowa City.

Location: Presser Hall, Gaines Chapel

Friday, April 4, 2025

2:00 p.m - 3:00 p.m: Writers' Festival Alumna Reading: Jennifer Bartell Boykin `05
Jennifer Bartell Boykin is the Poet Laureate of the City of Columbia, South Carolina. She was born and raised in Bluefield, a community of Johnsonville, SC. She received the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing with a Poetry Concentration (2014) and the Master of Library and Information Science (2024) from the University of South Carolina. She is the author of her debut book of poetry Traveling Mercy (Finishing Line Press, 2023) and her second book of poetry Only Believe (The Word Works, 2024) is a 2023 winner of The Hilary Tham Capital Collection. Both are published under the name Jennifer Bartell. Her poetry has been published in Obsidian, Callaloo, pluck!, The Raleigh Review, kinfolks, Jasper Magazine, the museum americana, Scalawag, and Kakalak, among others. She is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow and organized the Inaugural Soda City Poetry Festival in June of 2024. An alumna of Agnes Scott College, Jennifer has additional fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole. She is an award-winning English educator who has taught English for 15 years; she was the 2019-2020 Teacher of the year at Spring Valley High School. She is currently a school librarian at Muller Road Middle School.

Location: Dana Fine Arts Building, Winter Theater

Date: April 1 - 4, 2025

Location:

Agnes Scott College
141 East College Avenue
Decatur, GA 30030

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