The authors (and one translator!) who will be appearing as part of Lit Fest 2026 have been announced and can be viewed over on the English department's website.
We hope to see you at the readings!
Showing posts with label literary festival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary festival. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Friday, January 17, 2025
Wednesday, January 12, 2022
Monday, April 5, 2021
Monday, January 4, 2021
Monday, June 15, 2020
Want to Learn More about Black Lives Matter? Villanova English Faculty Reading Recommendations
The Villanova English Department stands in solidarity with our Black students, staff, and faculty and their allies against anti-Black racism, police violence, and racial injustice.
The faculty intend to contact students with an action plan before the fall semester begins, and we will be asking for student input as we proceed. In the meantime, if you have specific suggestions or questions about our department response, please direct them to Dr. Jean Lutes, chair of our department Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, at jean.lutes@villanova.edu.
![By Claudia Rankine ] Citizen: An American Lyric (Paperback)【2018 ...](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/31nyDozq0HL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg)
And, to help make sense of all of this reading, a short essay, “What is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?” by Dr. Lauren Michele Jackson: https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/anti-racist-reading-lists-what-are-they-for.html
As a first step in our response to the rising Black Lives Matter movement, we invite you to consider this reading list on white supremacy, policing, and racial justice:
- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963) [available online via Falvey Library], and Raoul Peck’s 2018 documentary I Am Not Your Negro [available for purchase on Youtube and Amazon prime video]
- Claudia Rankine, Citizen (2014) -- Rankine read at Villanova during the 2019 Literary Festival
- Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation (2016) [available online via Falvey]
- Reginald Dwayne Betts, Felon: Poems (2019) -- Betts read at Villanova during the 2017 Literary Festival
Online Resources
On prisons, policing and punishment:
Breaking down the Prison Industrial Complex Video Project by Critical Resistance: http://criticalresistance.org/videoproject/
Reading Towards Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness:
“Geographies of Racial Capitalism” video and “Intercepted” podcast episode featuring Ruth Wilson Gilmore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CS627aKrJI
The #BlackCatholics Syllabus, curated by Dr. Tia Noelle Pratt: https://tiapratt.com/blackcatholicssyllabus-2/
And, to help make sense of all of this reading, a short essay, “What is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?” by Dr. Lauren Michele Jackson: https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/anti-racist-reading-lists-what-are-they-for.html
Thursday, January 16, 2020
Wednesday, April 3, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Monday, April 16, 2018
Friday, March 30, 2018
Monday, March 12, 2018
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Literary Festival 20th Anniversary: Tyehimba Jess
The English department celebrated the 20th anniversary of of its yearly Literary Festival with a reception and reading by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tyehimba Jess on Jan. 30 in the President's Lounge.
The Literary Festival brings five award-winning, renowned and emerging writers—including poets, novelists, memoirists and playwrights—to campus each spring as part of the University's Creative Writing Program. During their visits to Villanova, the writers offer readings and discuss their writing with students in an English course specially designed around their work.
The Literary Festival brings five award-winning, renowned and emerging writers—including poets, novelists, memoirists and playwrights—to campus each spring as part of the University's Creative Writing Program. During their visits to Villanova, the writers offer readings and discuss their writing with students in an English course specially designed around their work.
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| Prof. Alan Drew, Dean Adele Lindenmeyr, Tyehimba Jess, Prof. Heather Hicks |
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Junior English major Kamakshi Ranjan introduced Tyehimba Jess. |
Thursday, February 8, 2018
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Friday, April 7, 2017
Thursday, March 23, 2017
A Message from the English Department re Charles Murray's Upcoming Visit
Dear English Majors,
In response to next week’s visit by controversial social scientist Charles Murray, the English Department invites you to attend a series of literary events that are designed to encourage robust reflection on racial and gender injustice and their human costs.
The first event is a series of free screenings of the 2016 Hollywood film Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis as Troy and Rose Maxson, a working-class couple living in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. The film is an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by August Wilson, a brilliant playwright whose work illuminates the unique political, social, and economic challenges faced by African American men and women in the twentieth century. The screenings will take place at 3:30 p.m. Monday, March 27th, and at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 28th, and Wednesday, March 29th, in the Connelly Cinema.
The second event, which is part of our annual Literary Festival, is a reading by Reginald Dwayne Betts, whose award-winning memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (2009), chronicles his years in prison, reflects back on his crime, and looks ahead to how the books he discovered while incarcerated would come to define him. Betts is also a poet, and his latest book, Bastards of the Reagan Era (2015), was described in Publisher’s Weekly as “a devastatingly beautiful collection that calls out to young black men lost to the pitfalls of urban America.” This event will take place on the evening of Thursday, March 30th, at 7:00 p.m. in the Speaker’s Corner of Falvey Library.
Because we believe in the transformative power of literature, we see these two events as an ideal opportunity for everyone in our community to stand together in support of diversity and inclusion. Writers such as Wilson and Betts challenge preconceptions, inspire compassion and understanding, and demand that we reckon directly with injustice and oppression.
In response to next week’s visit by controversial social scientist Charles Murray, the English Department invites you to attend a series of literary events that are designed to encourage robust reflection on racial and gender injustice and their human costs.
The first event is a series of free screenings of the 2016 Hollywood film Fences, starring Denzel Washington and Viola Davis as Troy and Rose Maxson, a working-class couple living in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. The film is an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by August Wilson, a brilliant playwright whose work illuminates the unique political, social, and economic challenges faced by African American men and women in the twentieth century. The screenings will take place at 3:30 p.m. Monday, March 27th, and at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 28th, and Wednesday, March 29th, in the Connelly Cinema.
The second event, which is part of our annual Literary Festival, is a reading by Reginald Dwayne Betts, whose award-winning memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (2009), chronicles his years in prison, reflects back on his crime, and looks ahead to how the books he discovered while incarcerated would come to define him. Betts is also a poet, and his latest book, Bastards of the Reagan Era (2015), was described in Publisher’s Weekly as “a devastatingly beautiful collection that calls out to young black men lost to the pitfalls of urban America.” This event will take place on the evening of Thursday, March 30th, at 7:00 p.m. in the Speaker’s Corner of Falvey Library.
Because we believe in the transformative power of literature, we see these two events as an ideal opportunity for everyone in our community to stand together in support of diversity and inclusion. Writers such as Wilson and Betts challenge preconceptions, inspire compassion and understanding, and demand that we reckon directly with injustice and oppression.
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Monday, February 13, 2017
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
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