Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral

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"Through thickest gloom look back, immortal shade, on that confusion which thy death has made."

Phillis Wheatley

In 1973, Margaret Walker hosted a groundbreaking conference for Black women writers for the bicentennial of Phillis Wheatley’s work, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Under the Black Studies Institute that Walker had founded five years earlier at Jackson State, thirty of these leading women participated in a series of lectures, roundtable discussions, poetry readings, and other events on campus.

Fifty years later, seven of the ten living attendees from the original Festival, including the likes of Alice Walker, Paula Giddings, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and Sonia Sanchez, have agreed to return to Jackson State for a reconvening of the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival. They have agreed to serve as honorary co-chairs and participate in intergenerational conversations with writers like Nikole Hannah-Jones, Jesmyn Ward, Imani Perry, and Angie Thomas. In addition to plenary sessions with our featured writers, we had a call for proposals for concurrent sessions featuring original creative writing and literary analysis.

In all, fifteen Black women writers will attend the 50th anniversary reconvening and participate in keynote events from November 1 to 4, 2023.

FROM:  The Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival History page  https://www.jsums.edu/philliswheatley/about/history/