10:30am - Budding Identities: Growing Up Queer
In her debut poetry collection, In the Cosmic Fugue, Jocelyn Heath attempts to portray the complexities of the speaker’s sense of self as she emerges from adolescence into a budding queer identity. Author Julie R. Enszer says, “Jocelyn Heath’s poems shimmer with wonder at the night sky and shine, illuminating cosmic mysteries and truths.” Willie Lee Kinard III’s debut poetry collection, Orders of Service, portrays the everyday lives of Black queer people living in the American South – underscoring the strong counterculture created by social media in a land of gospel traditionalism of the Bible Belt. Publisher’s Weekly says, “Drawing on a diverse array of mythological figures from African and Western traditions as well as Black- and Southern-inflected Christian ritual, Kinard’s poems form an intricate cosmology that transcends the personal to reflect on a close-knit, complex community.”

Location: Wilkins Plaza Tent, between the Johnson Center & Horizon Hall, George Mason University

12pm - Evil Eye: Breaking Curses and Cycles
Etaf Rum’s latest novel, Evil Eye, offers a thoughtful and emotionally-resonant story about a young Palestinian-American woman, Yara, searching for fulfillment as she grapples with intergenerational trauma and her complicated relationship with her mother. Author Diana Abu-Jaber says, “Wise, expansive, and deeply compassionate…This fierce story explores the notion of women’s freedom and of what becomes of identity when gender roles, family, and cultural traditions are challenged and rewritten.” Sponsored by Women and Gender Studies.

Location: Wilkins Plaza Tent, between the Johnson Center & Horizon Hall, George Mason University

12pm - Orders of Service
Willie Lee Kinard III’s debut poetry collection, Orders of Service, portrays the everyday lives of Black queer people living in the American South – underscoring the strong counterculture created by social media in a land of gospel traditionalism of the Bible Belt. Publisher’s Weekly says, “Drawing on a diverse array of mythological figures from African and Western traditions as well as Black- and Southern-inflected Christian ritual, Kinard’s poems form an intricate cosmology that transcends the personal to reflect on a close-knit, complex community.”

Location: Fenwick Reading Room, 2nd Floor, Fenwick Library

1:30pm - Pushed Together, Forced Apart
Helen Benedict,  Myriam J. A. Chancy, and Munir Hachemi examine immigration, class, and human connection in their latest internationally-based novels. Benedict’s The Good Deed is set in 2018 in a refugee camp in Greece. It follows the stories of four women living in the camp and an American tourist who comes to the island and does a ‘good deed’ that sets off a crisis. Chancy’s The Village Weavers tells the story of two Haitian families that are forever linked, despite being on opposite ends of the class spectrum. Hachemi’s Living Things follows four migrants working on a nightmarish industrial chicken farm in France, enduring the trials of immigration, employment, and capitalism. In Partnership with the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center.

Location: Fenwick Reading Room, 2nd Floor, Fenwick Library

1:30pm - Navigating Identity Across Language, Space, and Time
Ani Gjika and Grace Loh Prasad present thought-provoking memoirs about their experiences reclaiming and reconceptualizing their identities. Gjika’s debut, An Unruled Body, depicts her journey to understand her trauma, her grief, and her own sexuality.  Kirkus Reviews calls the book a “soulful, insightful memoir about an Albanian immigrant’s quest to learn her body’s language.” Prasad’s memoir, The Translator’s Daughter, follows her life as she undergoes a journey to reclaim her Taiwanese heritage. Author Katie Noah Gibson says, “Prasad’s memoir is a tender tribute to her multilingual parents and a sensitive evocation of life as part of the Asian diaspora.”   

Location: Wilkins Plaza Tent, between the Johnson Center & Horizon Hall, George Mason University

3pm - The Qur’an between History and Ideology
In his latest book, God’s Other Book: The Qur’an between History and Ideology, GMU professor Mohammad R. Salama offers a critique of the ways people interpret early Islam and the Qur’an. In this work, Salama explains how the Qur’an played a cultural role in the Arab community of seventh-century Hijaz, and then applies his research to the present and future. He asserts that only with renewed attention to the Qur’an itself can Western readers meaningfully engage with Islamic studies.

Location: Fenwick Reading Room, 2nd Floor, Fenwick Library

3pm - The Registry of Forgotten Objects
Best-selling author Miles Harvey’s story collection, The Registry of Forgotten Objects examines the way human desires can influence the inanimate objects around them, exploring how material things can reveal truths about humanity. Author Charles Baxter says, “This astonishingly beautiful book of interlocking stories has at its center things and people that are about to disappear. Sometimes what has been lost, however, can be recovered. It is as if all these stories compose one large story, an emotional journey of the lost and found.”

Location: Wilkins Plaza Tent, between the Johnson Center & Horizon Hall, George Mason University

4:30pm - Mason Alumni Prose Reading
Celebrate the accomplishments of three Mason Creative Writing alumni! Hear from John Copenhaver, author of Hall of Mirrors, Sean Murphy, author of This Kind of Man, Noley Reid, author of Origami Dogs, and K.E. Semmel, author of The Book of Losman. Copenhaver’s novel investigates the mysterious death of a popular novelist in McCarthy-era Washington, DC. Murphy’s story collection investigates masculinity in 21st-century America. Reid’s story collection celebrates the connection between humans and their dog companions. Semmel’s novel interrogates how far a lonely man will go to feel complete. Sponsored by Mason Creative Writing.

Location: Fenwick Reading Room, 2nd Floor, Fenwick Library

6pm - A Conversation with Aaron Burch
Aaron Burch’s essay collection, A Kind of In-Between, examines the recent years of the author’s life, as well as his childhood, in a series of snapshots that explore growing up, moving forward, and the complexities of human relationships. Author Andrew Porter calls the collection “a beautiful meditation on aging and memory and the difficulty of letting go of the past.” Sponsored by Mason Creative Writing.

Location: Fenwick Reading Room, 2nd Floor, Fenwick Library

7:20pm - Dirt Don’t Burn: A Black Community’s Struggle for Educational Equality
Co-authors Larry Roeder and Barry Harrelson have compiled the story of Loudoun County’s all-Black, rural schoolhouses in Dirt Don’t Burn: A Black Community’s Struggle for Educational Equality Under Segregation. This research was conducted as part of The Edwin Washington Project, a volunteer organization that has organized and uncovered documents detailing the history of these schoolhouses. These documents, which were originally left to rot in an abandoned building, tell a story of Black resilience and determination. Historian Brian J. Daugherity says, “Dirt Don’t Burn documents the important and neglected story of the education of African Americans in Loudoun County, Virginia, during the Jim Crow and civil rights eras.”

Location: Johnson Center, 3rd Floor, Meeting Room E