The YAWP: Villanova's Graduate English Program Blog

Raina J. León, Poet Laureate of Philadelphia Raina J. León, PhD, the 2026-2027 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, will visit Professor Michael Dowdy's Literary Theory course on Tuesday 7:30pm-9:30pm, November 10 to do a hybrid talk/reading/performance.  The event is open to all MA students! Raina J. León's body of work spans across v isual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work.   Per her website, Dr. León is "a founding editor of The Acentos Review , the co-founder of Wild Indigo Poetry Reading Series, the author of black god mother this body , and co-founder of StoryJoy, Inc. with Dr. Norma Thomas." You can read more about Dr. León and her work at her website .

Professor Kamran Javadizadeh recently participated in the Stonington Literary Festival, a three-day event that took place from October 2-4 and celebrated the poet James Merrill and his work. Since Merrill's death in 1996, his former home in Stonington, Connecticut has played host to a writers-in-residence program, in which Professor Javadizeh participated in 2022. For this year's festival, which marked the centennial of Merrill's birth in 1926, Professor Javadizadeh and other former writers-in-residence were invited back to participate in panels, readings, and other events such as musical performances and tours. Professor Javadizadeh served as the moderator for the "Poetic Afterlives" panel featuring poets Ange Mlinko and Rosanna Warren in which the group discussed Merrill's legacy. In a follow-up email, Professor Javadizadeh told me about the scope of the conversation. " A hot topic for us was how Merrill’s reputation as an urbane, technically virtuosic,...