Poetry Reading with Elizabeth Hughey & Monica Fambrough

April 28, 6pm

Birmingham-based poet Elizabeth Hughey will read from her new poetry collection, White Bull. Composed entirely of words taken from the letters and public statements of the notorious segregationist Bull Connor, the poems in White Bull use language that was wielded in violence and oppression to reckon with the present moment. Hughey is the co-founder and Programming Director of the Desert Island Supply Co. (DISCO), a literary arts center in Birmingham, Alabama,

Hughey will be joined by poet Monica Fambrough, whose most recent chapbook Blue Transfer was published by Oversound in 2020. A University of Georgia graduate, she is the author of Softcover (Natural History Press) and works for the Georgia Senate Democratic Caucus.

Elizabeth Hughey is the author of Sunday Houses the Sunday House (University of Iowa Press), and Guest Host (The National Poetry Review Press). She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is the co-founder and Programming Director of the Desert Island Supply Co. (DISCO), a literary arts center in Birmingham, Alabama, where she lives with her husband, Chip Brantley, and their two sons.

Monica Fambrough is the author of the poetry collection Softcover (Natural History Press) and a chapbook, Blue Transfer (Oversound). Her work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, anthologized by the Everyman series, and translated for release in Germany by Sukultur. She is Communications Director for the Georgia Senate Democratic Caucus and lives in Marietta, Georgia.

Global Georgia Conversation: Ed Pavlić, Christine Cuomo & Cynthia Wallace

March 31, 7pm

"Outward: The Radical Legacies of Adrienne Rich - A Conversation with Ed Pavlić, Christine Cuomo & Cynthia Wallace" is presented as part of the Global Georgia Initiative public events series of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, in partnership with the department of English, the Creative Writing Program, and the Institute for Women's Studies.

Ed Pavlić's book, Outward: Adrienne Rich’s Expanding Solitudes was published in 2021 by the University of Minnesota Press. In it, Pavlić considers Rich’s entire oeuvre to argue that her most profound contribution in poems is her emphasis on not only what goes on “within us” but also what goes on “between us.” He shows how Rich’s most radical work depicts our lives—from the public to the intimate—in shared space rather than in owned privacy.

Pavlić is Distinguished Research Professor of English and African American studies, and affiliated faculty in creative writing, at UGA. His 13 published and forthcoming books range across (and at times between) genres: poetry, non-fiction, critical studies, and a novel.

Christine Cuomo is professor of philosophy and women's studies at UGA, and an affiliate faculty member of the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program, the Institute for African-American Studies, the Institute for Native American Studies, and the UGA Initiative for Climate and Society.

Cynthia R. Wallace is associate professor and head of the department of English at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, where she teaches and writes at the intersections of gender, race, religion, and politics in contemporary literature. Her book Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering was published by Columbia University Press in 2016.

Alumni Artist Lecture: Zipporah Camille Thompson

February 21, 4pm

The Black Artists Alliance host Zipporah Camille Thompson (MFA 2015) as a visiting artist on February 21, 2022. Thompson is a ceramist, weaver, sculptor, and activist based in Atlanta, Georgia- land of the Muskogee. A native Carolinian, Thompson explores alchemical transformations through clay and textiles, examining marginalized bodies and eliciting social change through her work. Sculpted shapeshifters and hybrid landscapes investigate otherness.

Zipporah Camille Thompson (she.her.hers) is a ceramist, weaver, sculptor, and activist based in Atlanta, Georgia-land of the Muskogee. A native Carolinian, Thompson explores alchemical transformations through clay + textiles, examining marginalized bodies and eliciting social change through her work. Sculpted shapeshifters and hybrid landscapes investigate otherness.

She received her MFA from the University of Georgia and her BFA from the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Her work has been featured in numerous publications and shown in spaces, nationally and internationally. Zipporah Camille Thompson is a 2021 MOCA GA Working Artist Project Fellow, a 2020 Artadia Atlanta Awardee, a Watershed Zenobia Scholarship Award grantee, an NCECA Multicultural Fellow, and an Idea Capital Travel Grant recipient. Thompson is represented by Whitespace Gallery in Atlanta, GA. She is a history addict, roller-skater, and lover of unicorns, zombies, the moon, tarot, and all things fantasy.