Keynote Speaker
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Building a Writing Community: MFA Programs and Beyond
Moderated by Victoria Hulbert
Featuring
Sr Álida
Al Favilla
Lenna Mendoza
A. Ng Pavel
Saturday, April 6
10:30-11:00 a.m.
UM Student Union, 3rd Floor
Classroom A-B
Victoria Hulbert
Originally from Los Angeles, Victoria Hulbert is a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Mississippi, where she also received her MFA in fiction in 2022. Her work has appeared in Boulevard, Witness, The Offing, and The Barcelona Review. She lives on a farm in Water Valley, Mississippi, where she is at work on her first novel.
Sr Álida
Sr Álida (she/her) is a Caribbean writer and educator. You can find her writing in “Ni de Aquí, Ni de Álla” from DWA Press 2021, the Southern Humanities Review summer 2021 issue (vol. 54.2), the 2022 Orison Anthology/Best Spiritual Literature, Teach for America One Day Virtual Magazine, and “When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent” forthcoming winter 2023 from University of Arizona Press. She is a 2021-2024 MFA Candidate in Fiction at the University of Mississippi. When she’s not writing, she is daydreaming about ripe orange malecón sunsets.
Al Favilla
Alyson (“Al”) Favilla (they/them) is a second-year MFA student and a Grisham Fellow in poetry at the University of Mississippi. Their work appears in Poetry Ireland Review, Diode, Electric Literature, McSweeney's, About Place, and the forthcoming Ecopoetry Anthology Vol. II. They are grateful to have received support and scholarships from Brooklyn Poets, SAFTA (the Sundress Academy for the Arts), Longleaf Writer’s Conference, and the Ossabaw Writers’ Retreat.
Lenna Mendoza
Lenna Mendoza (she/her) is a poet from Texas. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Foglifter, Salamander, Four Way Review, and Salt Hill Journal. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where she is an MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi.
A. Ng Pavel
A. Ng Pavel (吳慧靈) (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Chicago, IL. They are the founder of the Chicago Asian Writers Workshop, whose mission is to provide free creative writing classes that center Asian diasporic voices. They are currently pursuing an MFA in Fiction at the University of Mississippi. In their past artistic lives, they have been a member of the experimental band The Concept of Nature, a rock DJ for WHPK.fm Chicago, a filmmaker, and a fiber artist.
