June 18 at the Sewanee Inn
Contact April if you want to be on the wait list.
Join us to celebrate 20 Years of the Sewanee School of Letters!
Come to Sewanee this summer to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the School of Letters! Reconnect with friends, faculty, students, and alumni of the MA and MFA programs for readings and seminars. Our celebratory dinner on Thursday, June 18, at the Sewanee Inn is sold out, but please join us for our public events.
DINNER SCHEDULE JUNE 18
At the Sewanee Inn. Ticket sales are closed.
5:30 p.m. Books and Bubbly Enjoy cocktails, book sales, and photos.
7:00 p.m. Dinner and Remarks with Keynote Natasha Trethewey
ADDITIONAL EVENTS
Wednesday, June 17
11:00 a.m., University Bookstore, Faculty Book Signing with Rebecca Gayle Howell School of Letters faculty member and Aiken Taylor Award recipient Rebecca Gayle Howell will be signing her newest book of poetry, Erase Genesis (2026).
12 p.m. Craft Table with Rebecca Gayle Howell and Jacob Shores-Argüello Shortly after the signing, bring your own lunch as well as a draft, a question, a poem you've been stuck on, and an appetite. There will be time to eat, talk, and think together about what it means to make something. No agenda, no pressure. Radcliffe Fellow and Fulbright winner Jacob Shores-Argüello, a Costa Rican American poet and prose writer, will accompany Howell in the discussion. Location TBA.
2:00 p.m., University Bookstore, Alumni Book Signing with Donna Mintz, L'17 Mintz is the author of Stars at Noon (2026). "Weaving essay, memoir, and natural history with biography, Stars at Noon is one artist's pilgrimage through a book and a love letter to its author, James Agee, whose untimely death becomes the thread connecting it all."
4:30 p.m., Convocation Hall, Reading and Conversation with Eliana Ramage As part of our Summer Reading Series, novelist Eliana Ramage will read from her debut Reese's Pick novel, To the Moon and Back. If you were spellbound by the recent Artemis II mission, this book is for you! Details here. Free and open to the public.
THURSDAY, JUNE 18
The School of Letters 20th Anniversary Faculty Seminars Starting in Gailor, there will be coffee and donuts outside Naylor Auditorium inside the lower floor of Gailor Hall.
10 a.m. Naylor Auditorium, Adam O'Fallon Price will open with a craft lecture entitled, "In the Beginning: Writing a Good Story Introduction." Join us for this craft fiction talk.
11 a.m. Dr. Pamela Macfie will read and discuss her life in letters, Shakespeare, and memoir with a talk entitled, "Remember Me: Shakespeare and Memoir".
12 p.m., Stirling's Coffeehouse, Writing Session with Jamie Quatro Grab your own lunch at Stirling's and join this award-winning writer for a generative writing session. Open to students and alumni.
SATURDAY, JUNE 20
10 a.m. to 2 p.m., Social Lodge, Mindfulness for Writers with Elizabeth Watkins Price, C'02 Open to students and alumni. Learn mindfulness practices tailored to support a writer's life. Alumni, please RSVP with Will Pugh. Lunch included.
ABOUT NATASHA TRETHEWEY
Natasha Trethewey served two terms as the 19th Poet Laureate of the United States (2012-2014). She is the author of five collections of poetry, Monument (2018), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award; Thrall (2012); Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); and Domestic Work (2000), which was selected by Rita Dove as the winner of the inaugural Cave Canem Poetry Prize for the best first book by an African American poet and won both the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Book Prize and the 2001 Lillian Smith Award for Poetry. In addition to her poetry, Trethewey is the author of two memoirs, The House of Being (2024) and Memorial Drive (2020). Her book of nonfiction, Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, appeared in 2010. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Beinecke Library at Yale, and the Bunting Fellowship Program of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. At Northwestern University, she is a Board of Trustees Professor of English in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. At Sewanee, she has been the Haines Lecturer and an honorary degree recipient.
