Home to literary giants Mark Twain, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Maya Angelou, and John Keene (to name a few!), St. Louis is renowned for its literary roots. This history lives on in St. Louis’s thriving literary arts scene today. The Literary St. Louis exhibition traces WashU’s engagement in historical and contemporary reading series, print culture, and creative communities to celebrate the legacy of literary arts in St. Louis and the local cultural institutions bringing us literature today. Postdoctoral fellow with the WashU Center for the Literary Arts Ashley Colley organized this exhibition.

Join the International Writers Series for an evening of poetry with Oksana Maksymchuk, a bilingual Ukranian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. She will read and discuss her debut English-language poetry collection Still City, (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024) which reflects on the ongoing invasion of her home country. Lauris Veips, PhD Candidate in Comparative Literature, will join her in conversation.

Poetry is an art that has always concerned itself with the questions of life: what’s growing, what’s not, what’s thriving, what’s not, what’s being stifled, what’s being fed. The John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics is delighted to host Pádraig Ó Tuama as he explores dynamics of conflict, language, rhyme, description, and resolution for this engaging evening at Washington University in St. Louis.