Carroll Hosts Annual Literary Festival Nov. 6-8

Literary Festival Graphic

HELENA – Carroll College is hosting its annual Literary Festival, November 6-8. Sponsored by the Carroll Department of Languages and Literature and organized and executed by the Carroll senior English capstone class, this year’s literary festival theme is “Where Our Past Fuels Our Present.”

Co-keynote presenters poets John Hennessy and Corrie Williams will be delivering the keynote presentation on Thursday, November 7 at 7 p.m. in Trinity Hall Lounge, Carroll College.

The festival will continue through Friday evening in the Corette Library and will include student creative and academic presentations by Carroll and other nearby undergraduates, including a panel hosted by students from Blackfeet Community College, “Indigenous Issues in Literary Studies.”

This is an annual literary event which showcases the creative and literary talent of Carroll and other Montana students and community members. All events are free and the Helena community is encouraged to attend. For more details, visit, www.carroll.edu/litfest.

Schedule of Events

Wednesday, November 6

Poetry Reading, 3:30-4:30 p.m., Sage Room, Corette Library
Montana Poet Laureate Melissa Kwasny and Pushcart Prize winner and Professor Emeritus Ron Stottlemyer

Poems on Many Tongues, 6-8 pm, Sage Room, Corette Library
An opportunity to bask in poetry and the beauty of other languages as Carroll students, faculty and staff read poems in languages other than English. 6-8 pm, Sage Room, Corette Library, Carroll College

Thursday, November 7

Student Panel, 12:45-2 pm, Room 122, Corette Library
Student presentations of longer creative and academic works.

Short Readings, 1-2 pm, Sage Room, Corette Library
Student presentations of short creative works.

Student Panel, 2:15-3:30 pm, Sage Room, Corette Library
Student presentations of longer creative and academic works.

Keynote Address, 7-9 p.m., Trinity Hall Lounge
The 2019 Carroll College Literary Festival Keynote Address: Poetry By Corrie Williamson and John Hennessy


About Keynote Presenters:

Corrie Williamson

Corrie Williamson is the author of The River Where You Forgot My Name (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, 2019) and Sweet Husk (Perugia Press, 2014). She has taught writing at the University of Arkansas, Helena College, and Carroll College, and worked as a naturalist in Yellowstone National Park. In 2020, she'll be the resident at the PEN Northwest/Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency on the Rogue River in Oregon. Her poems have appeared in The Missouri Review, AGNIPoetry DailyShenandoah, and many other journals. She lives in Montana.

John Hennessy

John Hennessy is the author of two collections, Coney Island Pilgrimsand Bridge and Tunnel, and his poems appear in many journals and anthologies, including The Believer, Best American PoetryHarvard ReviewThe Huffington Post, Jacket (Australia), The New RepublicPoetryThe Poetry Review (UK), Poetry at Sangam (India), and Poetry Ireland Review. He is the co-translator, with Ostap Kin, of A New Orthography, selected poems by Sirhiy Zhadan, forthcoming in 2020; Hennessy and Kin won the John Frederick Nims Memorial Prize for Translation from Poetry magazine for poems from this book. Hennessy is the poetry editor of The Common and teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Friday, November 8

Student Panel, 1-2:15 pm, Sage Room, Corette Library
Student presentations of longer creative and academic works.

Indigenous Issues in Literary Studies, 2:30-3:45 pm, Sage Room, Corette Library
Dontae Fox, Chase Hall, Greg Hall from Blackfeet Community College

Student Panel, 4-5:15 pm, Sage Room, Corette Library
Student presentations of longer creative and academic works.