2022 Faculty

Yona Harvey (Poetry)

Yona Harvey is the author of the poetry collections You Don’t Have To Go To Mars for Love, which won the Believer Book Award for Poetry and Hemming the Water, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She co-wrote with Roxane Gay Marvel’s World of Wakanda and co-wrote with Ta-Nehisi Coates Black Panther & the Crew. She has also worked with teenagers writing about mental health issues in collaboration with Creative Nonfiction magazine.

Workshop: The Photograph is in My Hand: How Comic Books Inspire Time Travel & Other Surprises in Poetry
What do poetry and comics have in common? Just as line breaks expand or alter images in poems, so do panel transitions alter and enrich the narratives of comics with time bending effects. When, for instance, Dr. Manhattan begins his renowned monologue in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, “The Photograph is in my hand,” a startling and poetic series of flashbacks (and flash-forwards) is set in motion. In this generative workshop, we’ll draft new poems through writing prompts and readings of calligrams, concrete and visual poems, and, of course, comic books. We’ll experiment with time and image manipulation, scene-making, and other patternmaking elements, and then practice plotting the beats and rhythms of language on our own.

Brian Broome (Nonfiction)

Brian Broome’s debut memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods, is an NYT Editor’s Pick and the winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Medium, and more. Brian was a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and an instructor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

He has been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Writing Awards. He also won a VANN Award from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for journalism in 2019. His film, “Garbage”, won the Audience Choice Award at the Cortada Short Film Festival and was a semi-finalist in the Portland Short Fest. In the fall of 2022, he will be an Associate Professor in the Writing Program at West Virginia University.

Workshop: Your Story: Out Loud
This workshop will focus on the differences and similarities between the story performed, and the story read. Students will craft a narrative that work both for the page and in a performance setting. What emotions does the story out loud evoke and how can we transfer those feelings to the written word? The subject of narrative “voice” will be intensely explored.

Rajiv Mohabir (Poetry)

Rajiv Mohabir is an Indo-Caribbean American author of three acclaimed poetry collections, The Taxidermist’s Cut, Cowherd’s Son, and Cutlish; a book of translation, I Even Regret Night; and his hybrid memoir, Antiman. He is winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize, a 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, a finalist for the 2017 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry, and has received fellowships from Voices of Our Nationʻs Artist foundation, Kundiman, The Home School, and the American Institute of Indian Studies language program. He received his MFA in Poetry and Translation from Queens College, CUNY and his PhD in English from the University of Hawai`i. Rajiv is currently a professor at Emerson College.

Workshop: Observation as Poet’s Tool: A Generative and Peer-Critique Workshop
The image in poetry builds a connection with the reader that is at once relatable and unique to the speaker. Images are not only visual but also bodily, tapping into the ways we all experience the universe. In this combination generative and peer-critique workshop we will consider the work of the image in contemporary poetry and write into them. Each participant will be charged with keeping an image journal of the outside world from which we will create new works together. With reading contemporary poetry, responding to prompts, we will consider issues of poetry craft that will push the image into its deep, mysterious connection with the subconscious mind.

Deesha Philyaw (Fiction)

Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and a 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction; the collection was also a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Deesha is also the co-author of Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce, written in collaboration with her ex-husband. Her work has been listed as Notable in the Best American Essays series, and her writing on race, parenting, gender, and culture has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, The Rumpus, Brevity, dead housekeeping, Apogee Journal, Catapult, Harvard Review, ESPN’s The Undefeated, The Baltimore Review, TueNight, Ebony and Bitch magazines, and various anthologies. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.

Workshop: Playing with Form in Fiction
Serious writers are playful writers! The writing life demands perseverance and resilience, but sometimes writers find themselves unsure of how to keep moving forward through a story, or through the uncertainties and concerns that loom large in the world beyond our keyboards. One solution: Play! Through short readings, writing prompts, craft lessons, workshop exercises, and group discussions, we will discover/uncover who our characters are and what their stories are about, through experimentation with form.

2022 Festival Schedule

Day 0: Tuesday, June 21
12–5 p.m. EDT: Festival check-in

Day 1: Wednesday, June 22
9–11 a.m. EDT: Introductory Session with Megan Stielstra (workshop participants only)
11:10-11:30 a.m. EDT: Director’s Welcome
1–2:15 p.m. EDT: Panel: “Writing Resilience: Writing Practices in Uncertain Times”
2:25–3:20 p.m. EDT: “Writing Resilience” breakout sessions
3:30–5:30 p.m. EDT: First workshop
6:30 p.m. EDT: Faculty Reading: Rajiv Mohabir & Brian Broome

Day 2: Thursday, June 23
10 a.m.–12 p.m. EDT: Second workshop
2–3:15 p.m. EDT: Deesha Philyaw Keynote & Conversation, Hall of Philosophy
6:30 p.m. EDT: Faculty Reading: Yona Harvey & Deesha Philyaw

Day 3: Friday, June 24
10 a.m.–12 p.m. EDT: Third workshop
1–2:15 p.m. EDT: Panel: “Community Resilience: The Writing Workshop in Diverse and Dispersed Communities”
6:30 p.m. EDT: Community Reading

Day 4: Saturday, June 25
10 a.m.–12 p.m. EDT: Final Workshop
12:15–12:35 p.m. EDT: Festival farewell

Registration

Institutions hoping to sponsor the attendance of their undergraduate or graduate students may do so at discounted registration rates. Contact Emily Carpenter at [email protected].

Standard Registration: $550 (deadline May 31) / Early-bird Standard Registration: $500 (deadline April 30)
Includes four workshop meetings with a small group of writers; an introductory intensive with all workshop participants; opportunities for a la carte individual consultations with workshop faculty; all components of Explorations Registration.

Explorations Registration: $200
Includes faculty readings, a community reading, the keynote address and panel discussions.

Sponsored Students Standard Registration ($350 before April 30, $400 after April 30)

Register now at learn.chq.org

Accommodations

Writers’ Festival participants receive a discounted rate of $100 per night when booking their stay at the Athenaeum Hotel. Call 1-800-821-1881 to book your stay.

If you are interested in sharing a room with another participant ($50 each), you can use the Festival Discussion Board (access granted after festival enrollment) to find others who are open to co-stay and coordinate with them.

Additional options for accommodations are available at chq.org/accommodations.

Director

Originally from Buffalo, New York, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of Travesty Generator (Noemi Press), a book of computational poetry that received the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Anna Rabinowitz prize for interdisciplinary work and longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry. Their other poetry books include How Narrow My Escapes (DIAGRAM/New Michigan), Personal Science (Tupelo Press), a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press), and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press). Their fifth book, Negative Money, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in 2023. They are an Associate Professor in the departments of English, Africana Studies, and Art & Design at Northeastern University.

Past Faculty

Fiction Faculty

• Lee K. Abbott
• Dean Bakopoulos
• Aimee Bender
• Ron Carlson
• Dan Chaon
• Peter Ho Davies
• Anthony Doerr
• Tony Earley
• Brian Evenson
• Abby Frucht
• Jaimy Gordon
• Derek Green
• Laura Kasischke
• Jill McCorkle
• Tom Noyes
• Alissa Nutting
• Stewart O’Nan
• Pamela Painter
• Ann Pancake
• Alberto Álvaro Ríos
• Jess Row

Nonfiction Faculty

• Faith Adiele
• Valerie Boyd
• Tom Bridwell
• Beth Ann Fennelly
• Thomas French
• Philip Gerard
• Diana Hume George
• Lee Gutkind
• Barbara Hurd
• Mary Karr
• Porochista Khakpour
• Greg Kuzma
• Suzannah Lessard
• Jacob Levenson
• Joe Mackall
• Nancy McCabe
• Dinty W. Moore
• Leslie Rubinkowski
• Mike Scalise
• Patsy Sims

Poetry Faculty

• Maggie Anderson
• Robin Becker
• Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
• David Citino
• Martha Collins
• Carl Dennis
• Denise Duhamel
• Stephen Dunn
• Frank X. Gaspar
• Margaret Gibson
• francine j. harris
• William Heyen
• Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
• Dorianne Laux
• Malena Mörling
• Hoa Nguyen
• Alicia Ostriker
• Stanley Plumley
• Lia Purpura
• Bruce Smith
• Maura Stanton
• Michael Waters
• Marcus Wicker

Keynotes, Panelists and Breakout Leaders

• Meg Day
• Devin Donovan
• Kate Glavin
• Jimin Han
• DaMaris B. Hill
• Nicole Homer
• Linda Lowen
• Maria Maldonado
• Susannah Nevison
• Jillian Powers
• Kenyatta Rogers
• Mike Scalise
• Mathias Svalina
• Jim Tobin