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Exhibitor Application: Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival at Jackson State University
November 1, 2023 - November 4, 2023
This November, the Margaret Walker Center is hosting the 50th anniversary reconvening of the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival in Jackson!
In 1973, Margaret Walker hosted a groundbreaking conference for Black women writers for the bicentennial of Phillis Wheatley’s work, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Fifty years later, seven of the ten living attendees from the original Festival, including the likes of Alice Walker, Paula Giddings, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and Sonia Sanchez, will return to Jackson State for a reconvening of the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival. They have agreed to serve as honorary co-chairs and participate in intergenerational conversations with writers like Nikole Hannah-Jones, Jesmyn Ward, Imani Perry, and Angie Thomas.
With six keynote conversations featuring 18 of the greatest Black women writers in the world, the Festival will feature another 90 presentations of creative writing and scholarship over 23 concurrent sessions.
Our Exhibitors‘ Alley will be available to Festival attendees from 8:00 am to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, November 2 and 3, in the atrium of the Jackson Convention Complex, where all of the daytime programming will be held.
If you would liketo sell your books and other materials or promote your organization and programming, please email us with a short summary of what you expect to sell or promote. If approved, you will be sent a vendor/exhibitor registration link. There is a $125 fee. Exhibitor booths will include a table and two chairs, and you may have access to an electrical outlet upon request.
Please email us and Arami Harris, MWC Education and PR Manager, at arami.l.harris@jsums.edu