A Conversation with Lynne Thompson and Morgan Parker at the 2024 Texas Book Festival

Описание: Over two unforgettable days, Torch Literary Arts celebrated its third year as a Texas Book Festival partner with a powerful literary lineup spotlighting Black women writers. The events featured award-winning poet, essayist, and novelist Morgan Parker and Los Angeles Poet Laureate Lynne Thompson, both of whom brought depth, wit, and soul to Austin through thought-provoking conversations and readings.

The weekend kicked off Friday, November 15 at the Carver Museum with a warm, community-centered reception and reading, where Parker and Thompson read from their acclaimed works—You Get What You Pay For and Blue on a Blue Palette—alongside other Black women writers in the Torch community.

The momentum continued Saturday, November 16 at the Texas Capitol, where Parker and Thompson unpacked their creative processes, historical influences, and the emotional truths embedded in their writing. Their work explores the intersections of race, gender, joy, and survival with clarity and heart.

The festivities culminated Saturday night at the Speakeasy, where Torch joined the Lit Crawl, curating a dynamic evening of poetry and memoir featuring Parker, Thompson, Amina Gautier, Anastacia-Renee, and host Amanda Johnston.

Morgan Parker is a poet, essayist, and novelist. She is the author of the young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and has been hailed by The New York Times as “a dynamic craftsperson” of “considerable consequence to American poetry.” Parker’s debut book of nonfiction, You Get What You Pay For, was published in March 2024.

Lynne Thompson served as Los Angeles’ 4th Poet Laureate and received a Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of four collections of poetry, Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Press Prize and the Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar (What Books Press); Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize selected by Jane Hirshfield; and,, Blue on a Blue Palette, published by BOA Editions in April 2024. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards including the George Drury Smith Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, the Tucson Literary Festival Poetry Prize, and the Steven Dunn Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Summer Literary Series (Kenya) and the Vermont Studio Center. Thompson’s recent work can be found or is forthcoming in the literary journals Best American Poetry 2020, Kenyon Review, Georgia Review,, Copper Nickel, and Gulf Coast, as well as the anthology Dear Yusef: Essays, Letters, and Poems For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa, among others.

About Torch Literary Arts

Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established with love and intention in 2006 to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. Torch Magazine has featured work by Toi Derricotte, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.

This event was made possible with support from the City of Austin Economic Development Division, the Burdine Johnson Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation.