From April 7th to the 10th Agnes Scott celebrated the 55th Annual Writers’ Festival, the oldest continuous literary event in Georgia honoring major and emerging contributors to the craft alongside their works. Preparations for the festival have gone on behind the scenes all year, most notably with the acceptance of submissions to the festival’s student writing contest, a competition encompassing four genres and allowing submissions from any student at any college in the state.
The contest sought out works of poetry, creative nonfiction, short fiction, and playwriting and finalists were chosen by an outside panel of judges. Works were then compiled by the colleges’ Writers’ Festival Editing & Publishing class taught by Professor and English Department Chair Alan Grostephan and consisting of juniors and seniors. The class worked to edit, format, and design the festival magazine while simultaneously helping to put on events like the student finalists’ reading. On Tuesday, competition finalists from the college were joined by friends, family, and faculty as they read selections from their pieces, followed by a reception and kickoff for the festival magazine.
The festival invites three authors to give readings, answer questions, teach, and choose the winners of the festival contest. This year’s authors were John Keene, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, and Agnes alum Charlene McClure, three creatives who explore multiple media as a means of creating and sharing their art. On Thursday the three authors spent an hour answering questions from students on an array of subjects. Keene talked about how he got into writing because he grew up with a mom who read everything and how he was encouraged to write by joining The Dark Room, a writers salon for Black writers. On overcoming the anxiety of authorship and being comfortable with public speaking, Sabatini Sloan said that she never plans what she will say at events because she believes in the “spontaneity of being present.” All three writers agreed that they focus on the same subjects with McClure describing the process as “digging in the same hole and reaching something else.”
Afterwards, Sabatini Sloan, an essayist and painter who also taught a week-long workshop during the festival, gave a reading from her book-length essay Borealis which tells the story of her visiting Alaska with her ex-girlfriend and then going back years later with another ex-girlfriend. The reading was quirky and raw, making the room feel much smaller and more intimate. She also read her essay “Grey’s Anatomy” which explored the life and death of the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat and highlighted a common theme in her work: combining threads of popular culture topics with strong emotional topics. When asked in the Q&A section how she puts these pieces together in her essays, she said that she usually starts with the image and the idea already meshed together in her mind and builds the essay around the pair.
The final event of the night was John Keene’s reading which was preceded by Professor Grostephan’s announcement of the student contest winners. Noelle Jones won in the category of poetry, Kaiman Smith in playwriting, Abigail Sanders in nonfiction, and Agnes Scott’s own Imani Milligan in fiction. Imani’s piece is titled “Lights Out” and she was excited and proud to find out that the piece won, especially since it was written “serendipitously” with the “least planning, most spontaneity, and the least time,” definitely having entered into what Mr. Keene would call a “flow state.”
Keene read an essay from his book Counternarratives, a collection of short fiction that imagines the perspectives of different people across five centuries. The essay he read is titled “Acrobatique” and was inspired by the painting Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando by Edgar Degas. The essay follows Miss La La, an aerialist, as she performs at the Cirque Fernando and eventually meets Edgar Degas, a man she finds off-putting in his demeanor but still agrees to sit for a painting. The essay makes Keene’s talents abundantly clear as he seems to effortlessly throw himself into the voice of Miss La La. He also read the beginning of a new project titled Wound, a novel about a teenager who skips school to play computer games, much to the upset of his mother.
The final event of the festival was the alum reading by Charlene McClure, a member of the class of 2010. McClure is a poet and filmmaker who starred in All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt in 2023 and published her poetry collection d-Sorientation in 2024. McClure began her reading with a moment of silence in honor of Kamilah Aisha Moon, the late poet and professor at Agnes who heard McClure’s poetry in New York after she had graduated. During her moment of silence, McClure carried out a small piece of performance art as she placed a clear glass bowl on top of a blanket and placed rose petals inside while pouring water over them. McClure read largely from her poetry book, exploring the idea of putting down roots and remembering where we have come from. She also read one of Professor Moon’s poems “The Color Purple Rain,” a poem that pulls together the book The Color Purple and Prince’s “Purple Rain” and her response to it titled “The Bluest Purple Rain,” named after the same song alongside Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. McClure’s emphasis on all aspects of her reading as art may seem hippie-leaning, but it is clear she is an all-around Scottie.
The 55th Annual Writers’ Festival was yet another success, and we at The Profile cannot wait for the next one. Be sure to check out this year’s magazine and congratulate Imani on her win!
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