news
Queer Latinx social dancing lecture and workshop – March 26/27
Mar. 24, 2026—More news
Lux Magazine to discuss gender and politics in the university – April 1
Mar. 23, 2026—More news
SWING literary magazine event features MFA professor Tony Earley – March 25
Mar. 12, 2026— Wednesday, March 25 6:30 PM Reading Vanderbilt Special Collections Library 1101 19th Ave South Nashville, TN 37212 On Wednesday, March 25, at 6:30pm, join Nashville’s Porch Writers’ Collective and Vanderbilt’s Special Collections and University Archives to celebrate the launch of the latest issue of...
Jared Harvey to publish chapbook “Ten Islands”
Mar. 10, 2026—Lecturer Jared Harvey, whose pen name is Jared Joseph, will publish a new chapbook, Ten Islands, with Essay Press. The work is part of a larger project, One Thousand Islands, wherein the author eats a Reuben sandwich each week and documents the experience. “A juicy, idiotically thorough chronicle of one of the more important deli...
Akshya Saxena to edit new series on accented thinking
Mar. 10, 2026—Associate Professor Akshya Saxena and the co-editors of Thinking with an Accent have launched “Accented,” a new open-access book series from Amherst College Press. Accented publishes works exploring accent as a critical mode of cultural production and interpretation. The series seeks to model accented thinking as a way to disturb the normative logics of academic, archival, media, legal,...
Shelby Johnson to deliver Drake Lecture – March 20
Mar. 3, 2026—Friday, March 20 10:00 – 11:00 AM Divinity 127 “Dreaming Sacagawea” Across the thousands of pages that comprise the eighteen modern volumes of Lewis and Clark’s journals (1803-1806), Sacagawea appears in just a hundred passages. Although she may be the most documented Indigenous woman of the early 19th century, few of these entries referred to...
Keegan C. Finberg to deliver Drake Lecture – February 27
Feb. 27, 2026—Friday, February 27 2:00 – 3:00 PM Divinity 127 “Reproduction and Generality: Feminist Diets in Poetry by Bernadette Mayer, Adrian Piper and Eleanor Antin” This talk will examine feminist performance art and poetry that experiments with food intake to consider effects of the political economic welfare conditions of the 1970s. Speaking directly to the tightening...
Major Jackson featured in Vanderbilt Research News
Jan. 30, 2026—Director of Creative Writing and Department of English Professor Major Jackson provides his writing expertise in “Devouring the Art of Language.” “Lyric poetry has as its material the dazzling complexity and beauty of raw emotions and thought, which can be awkward and embarrassing,” Jackson said. “My classes are about normalizing the conversations we have with...
MFA Student Sydney Mayes Awarded The FSG Writer’s Fellowship
Dec. 18, 2025—The 2026 FSG Writer’s Fellowship has been awarded to the poet Sydney Mayes. President and Publisher of FSG Mitzi Angel says: “Sydney Mayes is a poet of talent and originality. Her work is at once lucid and lyrical, archivally informed and new, cerebral and attentive to the body. Drawing from intimate and national histories, from...
Alum Donika Kelly fronts Poets & Writers Magazine
Nov. 17, 2025—Poet Donika Kelly, who received her PhD in English from Vanderbilt, is featured in the November/December 2025 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, following the publication of her third volume of poetry, The Natural Order of Things, from Graywolf Press. “In a time when escapist fantasies dominate the fiction charts, The Natural Order of Things is...