Location: Jimenez Hall, 1205
Schedule of Events
3 p.m.: Welcome by Jyana Browne
3:05 p.m.: Roundtable with Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia, and Fatemeh Keshavarz, and moderated by Fatemeh
4:15 p.m.: Pause (for coffee, bathroom break, etc)
4:30 p.m.: Introduction to Khaled Mattawa by Eyda Merediz
4:35 p.m.: Khaled Mattawa Keynote Talk and Reading with Q&A moderated with assistance from Marilyn Matar
5:45 p.m.: Wrap up Keynote
6:00 p.m.: Reception
Participants' Bios
Khaled Mattawa is a Libyan poet, and a renowned Arab-American writer, he is also a leading literary translator, focusing on translating Arabic poetry into English. He currently teaches in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan. He is the author of five books of poetry and a critical study of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. Mattawa has co-edited two anthologies of Arab American literature and translated over eleven volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry, including Adonis: Selected Poems and Concerto Al-Quds. A MacArthur fellow, Mattawa’s awards include an Academy of American Poets Fellowship and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He is the current Editor of Michigan Quarterly Review.
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an African American writer, poet, artist, and educator who works at the intersection of computation, AI, race, and gender. They are 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. They are the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. 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 available now. They direct the MFA in creative writing program at the University of Maryland. Their new chapbook, written with AI, is called A Black Story May Contain Sensitive Content and won the 2023 Diagram/New Michigan chapbook contest.
Juan Carlos Quintero-Herencia was born in Puerto Rico and he is professor of Latin American and Caribbean literature and culture at the University of Maryland. He is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. He has published several books of poetry. His two early poetic works, El hilo para el marisco and Cuaderno de los envíos, were edited into a single volume in 2002, which received the PEN Club of Puerto Rico Poetry Prize that same year. He has published La caja negra (1996), Libro del sigiloso (2012), El cuerpo del milagro (2016), and Minotauro en Mar Chiquita (2022). He is the author of Fulguración del espacio: Letras e imaginario institucional de la Revolución cubana 1960–1971 (2002), recipient of the Latin American Studies Association Premio Iberoamericano for 2004, among other books of essays and co-editions.
Fatemeh Keshavarz, born and raised in the city of Shiraz, and completed her studies in Shiraz University, and University of London. She taught at Washington University in St. Louis for over twenty years where she chaired the Dept. of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from 2004 to 2011. In 2012, Keshavarz joined the University of Maryland as the Roshan Institute Chair in Persian Language and Literature, and Director of the Roshan Institute Center for Persian Studies. Keshavarz is author of award winning books including Reading Mystical Lyric: the Case of Jalal al-Din Rumi (USC Press,1998), Recite in the Name of the Red Rose (USC Press, 2006) and a book of literary analysis and social commentary titled Jasmine and Stars: Reading more than Lolita in Tehran (UNC Press, 2007). She has also published other books and numerous journal articles. Keshavarz is a published poet in Persian and English and an activist for peace and justice.
This event is sponsored by SLLC, Persian, French and Italian, Arabic Studies, Spanish & Portuguese, Language House
Poetry in Conversation: Inaugural Event in honor of Lauretta Clough