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Keynote: Denne Michele Norris

Find Your Story...Writing with Pride

A keynote talk with novelist Denne Michele Norris

Join us for a moderated conversation with Find Your Story’s signature speaker, Denne Michele Norris. Norris will discuss her debut novel When the Harvest Comes, a story about a young Black gay man, estranged from his father, must confront his painful past—and his deepest desires around gender, love, and sex.

About the speaker and moderator

Denne Michele Norris is the editor-in-chief of Electric Literature, winner of the 2022 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. She is the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication. A 2021 Out100 Honoree, her writing has been supported by MacDowell, Tin House, and the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction, and appears in McSweeney's, American Short Fiction, and ZORA.

Her short story Last Rites appears in Everyday People: The Color of Life, an anthology published by Atria Books in 2018, and her story Daddy's Boy appears in the new anthology Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction. Her fiction has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her story Where Every Boy is Known and Loved was a finalist for the 2018 Best Small Fictions Prize. She is a 2019 Peter Taylor Fellow at The Kenyon Review Fiction Workshop.

She is the former Fiction Editor for both Apogee Journal and The Rumpus, and is co-host of the critically-acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot. Her debut novel, When The Harvest Comes.

Mahogany S. Thomas, moderator, rooted in Missouri and now a Washingtonian, advocates for marginalized communities at the intersection of social justice and radical hospitality. As Chief Program Officer at Bread for the City, Rev. Mahogany fosters equitable futures. An ordained Minister of Word and Sacrament in the United Church of Christ (UCC), she previously served as executive minister at Peoples Congregational UCC in D.C. With a Master of Divinity from Yale University and a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies from Westminster College, Missouri, she’s an acclaimed public speaker. As Scholar in Residence at Adas Israel Congregation, she delved into Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings and Womanist Theology. As Womanist Theologian in Residence at Calvary Baptist Church, she bridges academia and the church, fostering alternative dialogues.

About Find Your Story...Writing with Pride 

A Day of Writing and Community at MLK Library Celebrating DC’s LGBTQ Writers.

Find Your Story...Writing with Pride will be a day of workshops, presentations, and author talks focused on DC’s writing community. For World Pride the event will have special focus on LGBTQ writers in the DC area. The day will include panel discussions, informal writing workshops, and a dedicated poetry stage.

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