This biannual festival features ten-minute plays written in 48 hours based on a prompt devised by Playwright-in-Residence Charlotte Meehan. The festival is a collaboration between the Creative Writing Program and the Department of Theatre and Dance Studies.

Seniors graduating with a degree in creative writing and literature showcase original works of poetry, fiction and dramatic writing.

Creative writing alumnae Megan Collins ’06 and Jennifer Pierce ’13 read from their soon-to-be-published first novels. Collins, who holds a MFA from Boston University and teaches creative writing in Connecticut, will be reading from her manuscript Persephone’s Sister. Pierce, who received an M.A. in publishing in Oxford, England and works in Boston, Massachusetts, will read from her upcoming YA novel Slow Motion.

Christina Thompson, editor of the Harvard Review and the author of a memoir, Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, which was shortlisted for the 2009 NSW Premier’s Prize, reads from her work. Her new book Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, is scheduled for publication in summer 2018. May Room, Mary Lyon Hall, 5:00 p.m.

Conrad, whose most recent work includes While Standing in Line for Death, will read from their original poetry. They are the author of six books of poetry and won The Believer Magazine Book Award for their 2017 volume, ECODEVIANCE.

In his latest solo work, ‘El border brujo’ internationally acclaimed MacArthur fellow Guillermo Gómez-Peña draws from his 30-year-old living archive and combines new and classic performance material to present a unique perspective on the immediate future of the Americas. His self-styled “imaginary activism” invokes performance art as a form of radical democracy and citizenship. This spoken word performance includes multiple cameos by collaborator, Balitronica Gomez. Free tickets can be reserved through the Watson Box Office.

The Center for Social Justice and Community Impact, in collaboration with Alumni Relations and Academic Affairs, will be hosting Wheaton’s first ever Focus on First-Gen Week. This week of campus events will celebrate the first-generation college student community, an identity shared by nearly 20% of Wheaties! Events include:

To close out our week of first-gen events, on Thursday (2/8) at 5:30 pm in The Lyon’s Den, first-gen Wheaton alum and renowned spoken word poet, Roxy Azari ’10, will be holding a poetry workshop and performance of her original work on the topic of identity. This will be followed by an open mic session for student performers, as well as a Den open tab for participants.

Wheaton Creative Writing Faculty, Deyonne Bryant, Charlotte Meehan, and Kent Shaw, read from their original work.

Parms is assistant director of the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and teaches in the Professional Writing Program at Champlain College. Her most recent work is Lost Wax (University of Georgia Press, 2016). Her essays have appeared in Fourth Genre, The Normal School, Hotel Amerika, American Literary Review, Brevity and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, noted in Best American Essays and anthologized in Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction and Waveform: Twenty-First-Century Essays by Women.