NBF Presents: Genre-Bending

 

Friday, March 6, 12:10 p.m. to 1:25 p.m. ET

Ballroom II, Baltimore Convention Center, Level 400

Who gets to choose a book’s genre—the writer, the publisher, or the reader? Join National Book Award–honored authors on storytelling that traverses horror, sci-fi, mythology, and back. The writers will read from their work and join in conversation about the prescience and persistence of genre in contemporary literature, awards recognition, and the stories connecting with today’s readers. This event is moderated by Ruth Dickey, executive director of the National Book Foundation.

Panelist Bios:

Helen Phillips is the author of six books, including the novel Hum, a Slate top ten book of 2024 and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her novel The Need was longlisted for the National Book Award. She received the John Gardner Fiction Book Award and was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. She teaches at Brooklyn College.

Photo credit: Andy Vernon-Jones




’Pemi Aguda is an MFA graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan. Her writing has been published in Granta, Ploughshares, Zoetrope: All-Story, and other publications, and has been awarded the O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction. She is from Lagos, Nigeria, and is currently living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Photo Credit: Ife Oluwa Nihinlola  

Ruth Dickey has spent over twenty-five years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art, now as executive director of the National Book Foundation. Dickey previously had the pleasure of leading organizations in Washington, DC; New Orleans; Cincinnati; and, most recently, in Seattle, as executive director of Seattle Arts & Lectures. An ardent fan of dogs and coffee, she served as a fiction judge for the 2019 National Book Awards and holds an MFA in poetry from UNC Greensboro, as well as a BS in foreign service and an MA in Latin American studies from Georgetown University.