Season 5, Episode 5 // Glitterary Festival: A Queer Literary Festival — The Sarah Isom Center for Women & Gender Studies

Join us again this week as Jaime Harker interviews two poets and creative writing professors, Beth Ann Fennelly, former Mississippi Poet Laureate and Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, and Kate Leland, associate editor of Sibling Rivalry Press, about the process of creating The Glitterary Festival.

Learn about which cocktail was critical for the conception of their brainchild, and how they overcame the inevitable obstacles that appear when launching an inaugural festival during a pandemic. Fennel and Leland each share the heartache and joy of planning a festival that was first postponed in 2020 because of the pandemic, pushed online for a soft launch in 2021, and will now be in-person for the first time in 2022.

Discover how partnering with the Sarah Isom Center was essential to the creation of a festival that is yet another example of Feminist and Queer-World Making in Oxford, Mississippi, and why a small town like Oxford was the queerest and most logical choice to launch "a Queer Literary Festival with a Broad Definition of what is Literary and what is Queer."

Glitterary will also be a part of Oxford Pride Week, giving festival-goers a chance to see how a rural town in Mississippi celebrates Pride. All Glitterary events are free and will be held April 29, 2022, at the Ballroom at the Inn at Ole Miss. Panels begin that morning at 9 am. Happy hour is from 5 - 6 pm and the Keynote readings, featuring torrin a. greathouse and Jericho Brown will begin at 6:15 pm.

Click here for a full schedule of The Glitterary Festival

EPISODE NOTES

Read more about Keynote speakers, torrin a. greathouse and Jericho Brown, at their websites: https://www.torringreathouse.com and https://www.jerichobrown.com