2021 SSAWW Triennial Conference

Royal Sonesta Harbor Court Hotel, Baltimore, MD

November 4-7, 2021

Conference theme | American Women Writers: Ecologies, Survival, Change

The Evelyn Scott Society invites abstracts of 1-2 pages on the American writer Evelyn Scott (1893-1963). Papers may focus on any of her works (novels, short stories, memoir, poetry, young adult literature), and they may take any contemporary critical approach. We encourage papers that engage with the themes of the 2021 Society for the Study of American Women Writers Conference: Ecologies, Survival, Change. Scott’s work showed keen awareness of the “dynamic, interlocking systems that make up our world,” and often revealed stresses and fault lines where systems conflicted. She also frequently represented resilience in the face of change and hardship, but also probed characters and situations where change was experienced irrevocably as loss.

Scott participated in major literary currents during her writing life, including Imagism, naturalism, and modernism, and she had several literary mentors, including Lola Ridge, Theodore Dreiser, Waldo Frank, William Carlos Williams, and Jean Rhys, among others. 

The range of her work within these currents was wide, and included lyric poetry, modernist novels, an avant garde memoir, historical fiction, and political fiction. 

Please send abstracts and a curriculum vita to Caroline Maun at caroline.maun@wayne.edu on or before January 15, 2021.

SSAWW is planning a face-to-face conference for November 2021, but they will prepare contingencies depending on the public health situation.  Additionally, the Evelyn Scott Society panel may be presented as a stand-alone virtual event in November 2021 if conditions warrant and panelists prefer.

The Evelyn Scott Society is a dues-free literary organization. You are invited to sign up at our website: evelynscott.org