Press "Enter" to skip to content

Read-In for Women Empowerment

By Karis Fuller

Arts & Entertainment Editor

The ‘Women are Lit’ read-in will take place during common hour on March 20 in the Great Hall in Winnick House. The event will celebrate women and their uniqueness in society. Mary Pigliacelli, director of the writing center, organized this event for the second time after last year’s success.

Mary Pigliacelli

The event encourages women to share their favorite pieces of written work by other women, whether it be an essay, a tweet or a stanza from a poem. Pigliacelli explained how the event came to be.

“We received so much good feedback on last year’s event, which was a celebration of the diversity of women’s voices in the world and on our campus, so we’re very excited to be holding the event again,” Pigliacelli said. “Last year, students and faculty read authors such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Rosario Castellanos, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich, and many people shared their own writing as well.”

As for this year, there are several sponsors involved in running the events. The Black Student Union, the Rainbow Alliance, the Writing Center, and the Dept. of English, Philosophy, and Foreign Language will all co-sponsor this event.

Pigliacelli believes that the event encourages women to share not only their favorite work, but gives them the confidence to spread their own unique pieces. “I really believe that coming together to share the poems, the essays, the words that move us can very powerful,” she said.

“As Audre Lorde explains in her essay “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” poetry is “a vital necessity of our existence,” Pigliacelli said. “It forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.” Pigliacelli hopes that students, faculty and staff come and share their favorite literature or just listen and enjoy the event.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *