LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESENTS
DELTA MOUTH
LITERARY FESTIVAL
FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
(SCROLL TO LEARN MORE)
ABOUT
Since 2009, the Delta Mouth Literary Festival has been a flagship event for the literary arts in Baton Rouge. In partnership with the Louisiana State University Department of English, The Southern Review, New Delta Review, and the English Graduate School Association, we bring together renowned writers from across the nation for a three-day event that includes readings, panels, food, drinks, music, and a unique gathering of Baton Rouge’s creative community.
Our mission is to present internationally recognized and diverse literary talent to a Baton Rouge audience at no cost while celebrating Louisiana’s rich culture.
AUTHORS
~
2024
~
AUTHORS ~ 2024 ~
-
Carolyn Hembree is the author of three poetry collections: For Today (LSU Press, 2024); Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague (Trio House Press, 2016), winner of the Trio Award and the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award; and Skinny (Kore Press, 2012).
She holds an M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona and a B.A. in English and Theatre from Birmingham-Southern College. Born in Bristol, Tennessee, she has lived in New Orleans since 2001.
-
Born in the Gambia, Kweku Abimbola earned his MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program. He is of Gambian, Ghanaian, Sierra Leonean, and Nigerian descent.
Abimbola’s first full-length poetry collection, Saltwater Demands a Psalm, was published by Graywolf Press in April of 2023. The début collection received the First Book Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2022. Abimbola is a finalist for the 2021 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the second-place winner of the Furious Flower 2020 poetry contest.
-
Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in New York City. She is the author of the novel SEA CHANGE, which was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a 2023 B&N Discover Pick, and a New York Times Most Anticipated Book, and the short story collection GREEN FROG. \A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School's Creative Writing Program.
-
Brooke Champagne was born and raised in New Orleans, LA. Her writing appears widely in literary journals and has received various accolades and awards, including the inaugural William Bradley Prize for the Essay for her work “Exercises.” Her essays have been selected as Notables in Best American Essays 2019, 2021, and 2022 editions.
Her debut essay collection, Nola Face, will be published with the Crux Series in Literary Nonfiction at the University of Georgia Press in 2024.
-
Karisma Price is an assistant professor of English at Tulane University. A poet, screenwriter, and media artist, she is the author of I'm Always So Serious (Sarabande Books, 2023). Her work has appeared in publications including Poetry, Indiana Review, Oxford American, Four Way Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day Series, and elsewhere.
She is a Cave Canem Fellow, was a finalist for the 2019 Manchester Poetry Prize, was awarded the 2020 J. Howard and Barbara M. J. Wood Prize from the Poetry Foundation, and is the 2023 winner of the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review. A native New Orleanian, she holds an MFA in poetry from New York University, where she was a Writers in the Public Schools Fellow.
-
Annell López is a Dominican immigrant. She is the author of the short story collection I’ll Give You a Reason, forthcoming in 2024 from the Feminist Press. A 2022 Peter Taylor fellow, her work has received support from Tin House and the Kenyon Review Workshops and has appeared in American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. López is an Assistant Fiction Editor for New Orleans Review and an MFA candidate at the University of New Orleans. She is working on a novel.
-
Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Athena Dixon is a poet, essayist, and editor. She is the author of The Loneliness Files (Tin House 2023), The Incredible Shrinking Woman (Split/Lip Press 2020) and No God In This Room (Winner of the Intersectional Midwest Chapbook Contest, Argus House Press 2018).
Athena’s work has appeared in various publications both online and in print. She has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and creative nonfiction as well as a Best of the Net nomination for poetry. She is a fellow of Callaloo and V.O.N.A. as well as a Tin House Winter Workshop attendee.
-
Jami Attenberg has written about food, travel, books, relationships and urban life for The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, the Sunday Times, The Guardian, and others.
She is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up, and, most recently, a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home. Her work has been published in sixteen languages. She is also the creator of the annual online group writing accountability project #1000wordsofsummer.
-
Justin Torres is the author of the novel Blackouts. His debut novel, We the Animals, won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. He was named a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35,” a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library.
His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Tin House, The Washington Post, LA Times Image Magazine, and Best American Essays. He lives in Los Angeles, and teaches at UCLA.
