Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
Writer Mecca Jamilah Sullivan will be an artist-in-residence at the University of Central Arkansas from Nov. 6-7.
A public reading and book signing will be held Wednesday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. in the Windgate Center for Fine and Performing Arts Concert Hall.
Originally from Harlem, New York City, Sullivan is an associate professor of English at Georgetown University and lives in Washington, D.C. Sullivan is the author of three award-winning books. Her novel Big Girl (2022) was voted New York Times Editors’ Choice and winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel and the Balcones Fiction Prize; her short story collection Blue Talk and Love (2015) was the winner of the Judith Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary; and her contribution to literary theory The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (2021) won the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association.
“I knew that I would like to invite Mecca to speak at any university where I landed, even before I happily landed at UCA,” says faculty sponsor M Shelly Conner. “Mecca has been a long-time friend since being in our respective PhD programs—hers at the University of Pennsylvania and mine at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Our studies in those programs and our subsequent writing and work are in similar areas at the intersection of blackness, queerness and notions of home.”
Her residency includes the public reading and book signing, as well as an interview with graduate students, a master class and a craft talk with creative writing students.
Conner adds, “I continue to be amazed by the brilliance that Mecca’s writing adds to that discourse, and she is equally a wonderful storyteller and curator of Black lives and experiences in her fiction.
The UCA artists-in-residence program is funded by UCA arts fees with additional support from Engage Management and Pyramid Art, Books, and Custom Framing. These events are free to UCA students and open to the public. No tickets are required. Events are located on the UCA campus, 201 Donaghey Ave, Conway, AR 72035. For more information about the UCA Artist in Residence program, visit https://uca.edu/cahss/artists-in-residence/ or contact Gayle Seymour, associate dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at (501) 450-3293; gayles@uca.edu
Written by Victoria Walter
