Camille Dungy!

Well, it's been quite a week.

Last Monday we announced that Zadie Smith is next year's keynote speaker. Three days later, every seat in the Missouri Theatre for the event on April 20 was reserved. (If you didn't get a ticket, don't worry: click here for more details.) 

What makes the event more exciting still is that Zadie Smith will be joined onstage by another brilliant, multi award-winning writer - the poet and essayist Camille T. Dungy.

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Camille is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade, and an extraordinary essay collection, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys Into Race, Motherhood and History. She has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, and many other print and online venues.

Her honors include an American Book Award, two Northern California Book Awards, a California Book Award silver medal, two NAACP Image Award nominations, fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and a fellowship from the NEA. She is a professor at Colorado State University.

We're delighted to be welcoming Camille to Columbia. In addition to interviewing Zadie Smith on Friday evening, she'll also be appearing at the festival on Saturday to discuss her essays and poetry.