
SHELF LIFE—Living Queer History with Samantha Rosenthal
Samantha Rosenthal discusses Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City and the LGBTQ community in Roanoke, Virginia, that the book documents and celebrates. Interweaving historical analysis, theory, …

Making Sense of the World, Making Sense of Ourselves: Graphic Memoirs
Courtney Cook (The Way She Feels: My Life on the Borderline in Pictures and Pieces) and Laura Gao (Messy Roots: A Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese American) explore how growing …

Transformative Desire: Literary Fiction
Alex DiFrancesco (Transmutation), Lindsay Merbaum (The Gold Persimmon), and Morgan Thomas (Manywhere) discuss their genre-defying fiction, populated by characters who grapple with ideas of identity, desire, free will, transformation, and …

Bodies in Space & Time: Identity in Sci-Fi & Speculative Fiction
Ryka Aoki (Light from Uncommon Stars), Micaiah Johnson (The Space Between Worlds), and Lincoln Michel (The Body Scout) discuss the explorations of race, gender, and identity posed in their science …

The Emotional Pull of Home
Join authors Joanna Eleftheriou (This Way Back), Henry Hoke (Sticker), and Jennifer Niesslein (Dreadful Sorry) as they share their place-centered essays and memoirs, addressing questions of class, history, family, gender, …

The Wrong End of the Telescope with Rabih Alameddine
Rabih Alameddine (The Wrong End of the Telescope) discusses his latest novel, a transporting new novel about an Arab American trans woman’s journey among Syrian refugees on Lesbos island. In …

Magic & Mythical: YA Fantasy
Deborah Falaye (Blood Scion), TJ Klune (Flash Fire), and Anna-Marie McLemore (Lakelore) explore the challenges of growing up amidst the magical and extraordinary circumstances of fantastical worlds. Whether superpowers, mythological …

We Are Watching Eliza Bright with A.E. Osworth
A.E. Osworth, author of We Are Watching Eliza Bright, discussed their debut novel about a brilliant, self-taught, woman video game coder, the industry-pervading misogyny she faces, and the resulting violence …

Suggested Events for Fans of Literary Fiction
Keep reading to discover some of the literary fiction line-up on the 2021 Festival schedule…