Join PEN/Faulkner for the final Literary Conversation of the season: Spoken Words, featuring critically acclaimed poets and spoken word artists Fatimah Asghar, Olivia Gatwood, Danez Smith, and moderator Nate Marshall.

This Literary Conversation will include readings and performances by our featured authors and will be followed by a live Q&A with the audience. Live captioning will also be available for this event.

We are proud to partner with Politics & Prose as our exclusive bookseller for this event. You can find our featured authors' books on the Politics & Prose website!

If They Come for Us by Fatimah Asghar

Life of the Party by Olivia Gatwood

Homie by Danez Smith

Finna by Nate Marshall

Fatimah Asghar is a writer and filmmaker. In 2011 she created a spoken word poetry group in Bosnia and Herzegovina while on a Fulbright studying theater in post-genocidal countries. She is the writer and co-creator of Brown Girls, an Emmy-Nominated web series. A Ruth Lily and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, she was also featured on the 2017 Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list. She is the author of If They Come For Us (One World, 2018). She is the co-editor of Halal If You Hear Me, an anthology that celebrates Muslim writers who are also women, queer, gender nonconforming and/or trans.

Olivia Gatwood has received international recognition for her poetry, writing workshops, and work as a Title IX Compliant educator in sexual assault prevention and recovery. Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, she now lives in Los Angeles. Olivia is the author of two books of poems, Life of the Party, and New American Best Friend. Her debut novel, Whoever You Are, Honey, is scheduled to be released in 2023.

Danez Smith is a Black, Queer, Poz writer & performer from St. Paul, MN. Danez is the author of "Don’t Call Us Dead" (Graywolf Press, 2017), winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection, the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award, and a finalist for the National Book Award, and "[insert] boy" (YesYes Books, 2014), winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry. Danez is a member of the Dark Noise Collective and is the co-host of VS with Franny Choi, a podcast sponsored by the Poetry Foundation and Postloudness. Danez’s third collection, “Homie”, was published by Graywolf in January 2020.

Nate Marshall is the author and editor of numerous works including Finna, Wild Hundreds, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, and the audio drama Bruh Rabbit & The Fantastic Telling of Remington Ellis Esq. He teaches creative writing and literature at Colorado College. Nate was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago.