Emerging Critics Program

About

The Emerging Critics Program is designed to bring writers of color, women writers and non-binary writers to foster a flourishing community of reviewers and critics.

Through partnerships with different literary and publishing organizations, the program aims to provide the platform for marginalized writers to develop connections with established critics in the field, as well as teach emerging critics the practical tools, skills and resources they need to enter the field.

The program will include conversations with established literary critics; workshops of reviews and literary criticism; review-writing sessions; pitching and publishing sessions, and more. Interested participants will also have the chance to receive sustained support from our organization to secure publication of their work.

Dates & Fees

The Emerging Critics Program will be held virtually on October 7 - 11, 2024. Although the program runs for five days, the work of engaging with program participants will be sustained for at least six months. This means interested participants can continue to use Anaphora’s support to sustain their singular pathways into the field.

The program costs $1,200 to attend; several partial fellowships will be available depending on funding availability. Applications must be submitted by the priority deadline to be eligible for fellowships. Anaphora Fellows and returning alumni will have the opportunity to attend the program at a discounted rate.

Applications are now open! Apply by the priority deadline of July15th to be eligible for fellowships. Please note that we have limited space available; applications may close early if we reach capacity before the deadline. Please note: the deadline has been extended to August 15th - submit by then to be eligible for fellowships.

If you have any questions, please check out the program’s FAQ page, or contact us.

What to Expect

The program includes conversations with renown and award-winning critics and reviewers; sessions to discuss how to engage and pursue literary criticism; workshops of reviews and criticism with guest speakers; peer-lead critiques and review-writing sessions, and more. Additionally, through Anaphora’s ongoing partnerships with publishers, presses and various literary journals and magazines, participants will have access to forthcoming titles for review, based on their aesthetic, expertise and areas of interest. Anaphora will also help facilitate publication of reviews and literary criticism produced by participants through our partner organizations.

Speakers

Kazim Ali

Kazim Ali was born in the United Kingdom and has lived transnationally in the United States, Canada, India, France, and the Middle East. His books encompass multiple genres, including the volumes of poetry Inquisition, Sky Ward, winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Poetry; The Far Mosque, winner of Alice James Books’ New England/New York Award; The Fortieth Day; All One’s Blue; and the cross-genre texts Bright Felon and Wind Instrument. His novels include the recently published The Secret Room: A String Quartet and among his books of essays are the hybrid memoir Silver Road: Essays, Maps & Calligraphies and Fasting for Ramadan: Notes from a Spiritual Practice. He is also an accomplished translator (of Marguerite Duras, Sohrab Sepehri, Ananda Devi, Mahmoud Chokrollahi and others) and an editor of several anthologies and books of criticism. After a career in public policy and organizing, Ali taught at various colleges and universities, including Oberlin College, Davidson College, St. Mary's College of California, and Naropa University. He is currently a Professor of Literature at the University of California, San Diego. His newest books are a volume of three long poems entitled The Voice of Sheila Chandra and a memoir of his Canadian childhood, Northern Light.

Maya C. Popa

Maya C. Popa is the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022) and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), which was a recipient of the North American Book Prize and a runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong. She is also the author of two chapbooks, both from the Diagram Chapbook Series: You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave (2018) and The Bees Have Been Canceled (2017). She is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly and teaches poetry at NYU. She is director of creative writing at the Nightingale-Bamford school where she oversees visiting writers, workshops, and readings. She holds degrees from Oxford University, NYU, and Barnard College and is currently pursuing her PhD on the role of wonder in poetry at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Meghan O’Rourke

Meghan O’Rourke, award-winning poet, nonfiction writer, and acclaimed editor, is the author of the poetry collections Sun In Days, Once, and Halflife, as well as the memoirs The Invisible Kingdom and The Long Goodbye. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, two Pushcart Prizes, and the inaugural May Sarton Poetry Prize, among her many other awards, O’Rourke writes for The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, and is the editor of The Yale Review. She is a graduate of Yale University, where she also teaches.

Namwali Serpell

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. Her first novel, The Old Drift (Hogarth, 2019), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book prize for fiction “that confronts racism and explores diversity,” the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction, the Grand Prix des Associations Littéraires Prize for Belles-Lettres, the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, and a 2020 Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction (with Yiyun Li). It was short listed for the L.A. Times’  Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction and long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, the Nommo Award for Best African Speculative Novel, and the Historical Writers’ Association Debut Crown. It was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review, one of Time Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of the Year, and a book of the year by New York Times Critics, The Atlantic, NPR, and BuzzFeed. Her second novel, The Furrows: An Elegy, was published by Hogarth on September 27, 2022. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction; it was long listed for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. It was named one of the New York Times’ 10 Best Books and 100 Notable Books of 2022, and was one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of the year. Her short story, “Take It,” was a finalist for the 2020 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. In 2014, she was chosen as one of the Africa 39, a Hay Festival project to identify the most promising African writers under 40. In 2011, she received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her first published short story, “Muzungu,” was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2009 and short listed for the 2010 Caine Prize; she went on to win the 2015 Caine Prize for her short story “The Sack.”

Hope Wabuke

Hope Wabuke is an Ugandan American poet, essayist, and critic. She is the author of the poetry collection The Body Family and the essay collection Please Don’t Kill My Black Son Please (forthcoming from Vintage Books) as well as the chapbooks her, The Leaving, and Movement No.1: Trains. Hope writes literary and cultural criticism for NPR. She has also published widely in various magazines, among them The Guardian, The Root, Los Angeles Review of Books, NPR, The Sun Literary Journal, Creative Nonfiction Magazine, The Daily Beast, Ms. Magazine online, Lit Hub, Ozy, Salon, Gawker, The Hairpin, Dame, The North American Review, Salamander Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Hope has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Commission, the National Book Critics Circle, The New York Times Foundation, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women Writers, Cave Canem, the Awesome Foundation, Yale University’s THREAD Writer’s Program, The Poetry Foundation, and the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation (VONA). Hope is the Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is a former contributing editor for The Root, where she originated a column on African diasporic literature, and a founding board member and former Media & Communications Director for the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction. She is represented by Sarah Bowlin at Aevitas.

Please note: additional speakers will be added soon.