Asserting Agency: An Empowering Conversation with Lorraine M. López

Join Scarritt Bennett Center for a conversation with prize-winning author and Vanderbilt Research Professor Lorraine M. López. Interviewer Amy Wright will engage Dr. López in a conversation about claiming the right to speak your truth and author your story. Dr. López is an advocate devoted to empowering women and drawing us into necessary discussions on class, gender, culture, race, and writing. Audience questions will be welcomed.

Date/time: Doors open at 6:45pm, event starts at 7pm. Book signing immediately to follow.
Event Location: Harambee Auditorium, Fondren Hall (campus map)
This event is free, but seats are limited. Reserve your ticket at https://conta.cc/3BYwqCo.
Stream online: Viewers may also stream this event live at 7pm CT on our Facebook page.

Scarritt Bennett Center requires all who visit our campus to wear a mask while indoors, per CDC guidelines. Seating will be socially distanced.

About the Speakers

Lorraine M. López is Gertrude Conaway Professor of English, Director of Creative Writing, and Faculty Director of Latino and Latina Studies at Vanderbilt University.  With her retirement effective August 16, 2021, she will become Professor of English, Emerita, and Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair, Emerita.  For the 2021-22 Academic Year, Lorraine will also serve as Research Professor of English, rounding out twenty years of service to the Vanderbilt community. She has written seven works of fiction and edited or coedited three essay collections. Her first book, the short story collection, Soy la Avon Lady and Other Stories (Curbstone, 2002) won the inaugural Miguel Marmól prize for fiction, and her first novel, Call Me Henri (Curbstone, 2006) was awarded the Paterson Prize for Young Adult Literature in 2007. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where she is at work on multiple writing projects.

Amy Wright is the author of Paper Concert (Sarabande Books 2021), which creates a symphonic conversation among artists, activists, scientists, philosophers, physicians, priests, musicians, and other representatives of the human population. She has received two Peter Taylor Fellowships to The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and a fellowship to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has also written three poetry books and six chapbooks. Her writing appears in Brevity, Fourth Genre, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. She coordinates the Creative Writing Program at Austin Peay State University and edits Zone 3 journal and Zone 3 Press.