Keynote with Saeed Jones & The People's Project - Decatur Book Festival 2025

Описание: Join award-winning author and editor, Saeed Jones, for a keynote conversation with Victoria Chang and Aruni Kashyap — contributors to "The People’s Project", a compelling anthology that explores how art, storytelling, and community can help us navigate complex times.

Co-edited by Jones and writer Maggie Smith, "The People’s Project" brings together twenty-six writers and artists offering personal reflections on resilience, creativity, identity, and connection. This conversation explores the power of expression through poetry, essays, and visual art to inspire and sustain us, especially during periods of uncertainty.

Saeed Jones is the author of "Prelude to Bruise", winner of the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry and the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award. The poetry collection was also a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as awards from Lambda Literary and the Publishing Triangle in 2015. Jones was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and grew up in Lewisville, Texas. He earned a BA at Western Kentucky University and an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. He lives in Columbus, Ohio, and is on Bluesky @TheFerocity.

Joining Jones in conversation are two celebrated contributors to The People’s Project:

Victoria Chang is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech, a Guggenheim Fellow, and recipient of the Forward Prize for her 2024 collection With My Back to the World; she is also the author of acclaimed works like OBIT and Dear Memory, and a recipient of the Chowdhury International Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

Aruni Kashyap is Associate Professor and Director of Creative Writing at the University of Georgia, a Harvard Radcliffe and NEA Literature Fellow, author of the 2024 story collection The Way You Want To Be Loved, and a noted translator of Assamese literature whose work has received multiple award nominations.