TORCH x Texas Book Festival Panel

TORCH Literary Arts Presents: A Conversation with Destiny O. Birdsong and Remica Bingham-Risher with Amanda Johnston (moderator) 

Location Inside Texas Capitol: Capitol Extension, State Capitol, Room ​​E2.014

Remica Bingham-Risher’s work has been published in The New York Times, The Writer’s Chronicle, Callaloo and Essence. She is the author of Conversion (Lotus, 2006), What We Ask of Flesh (Etruscan, 2013) and Starlight & Error (Diode, 2017). Her most recent book, a memoir, Soul Culture: Black Poets, Books and Questions That Grew Me Up, was published by Beacon Press in 2022. She is the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA, where she resides with her husband and children. To connect online, visit www.remicabinghamrisher.com or on Twitter/IG: @remicawriter.

Destiny O. Birdsong (she/her) is a Louisiana-born poet, essayist, and fiction writer whose debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published by Tin House Books in October 2020, and was longlisted for the 2021 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection. Her debut novel, Nobody’s Magic, was published by Grand Central in February 2022. She earned her BA in English and history from Fisk University, and her MFA and PhD from Vanderbilt. In 2022, she was selected as the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University-Newark, and she will serve as an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville from 2022-2023.

Torch Literary Arts is a 501(c)3 nonprofit established to publish and promote creative writing by Black women. We publish contemporary writing by experienced and emerging writers alike. TORCH has featured work by Colleen J. McElroy, Tayari Jones, Sharon Bridgforth, Crystal Wilkinson, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Elizabeth Alexander, and others. Programs include the Wildfire Reading Series, writing workshops, and retreats.

Help TORCH continue to publish and promote Black women writers by donating today.

The Texas Book Festival connects authors and readers through experiences that celebrate the culture of literacy, ideas, and imagination.