PEN Ohio is proud to present Kenyon Review Editor Nicole Terez Dutton and novelist and Ohio PEN Across America chapter leader Jamie Lyn Smith ’96 as they hold a conversation about the vital role literary arts organizations play in fostering community and supporting a complex and critical national discussion. They will address ways in which literature and the act of storytelling have the capacity to engage civic dialogue.
Nicole Terez Dutton’s work has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Indiana Review and Salt Hill Journal. Nicole earned an MFA from Brown University and has received fellowships from the Frost Place, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her collection of poems, If One Of Us Should Fall, was selected as the winner of the 2011 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. She teaches in the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program and is the Editor of The Kenyon Review.
Jamie Lyn Smith is a writer, editor, activist and educator. She reads fiction for The Kenyon Review and co-edited the Fall 2024 “Rural Spaces” folio with Brian Michael Murphy and Andrew Grace. Her work with young writers includes service as a founding member of BreakBread Literacy Project and BreakBread Magazine, and founding the litmag, Bridge. Her work has appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, The Pinch, The Mississippi Review, The Kenyon Review, American Literary Review, Ploughshares and other fine literary magazines. Her short story collection, Township, debuted from Cornerstone Press in January 2022. She is the recipient of a 2020 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Fiction. A lifelong advocate for voting rights and freedom of expression, she lives, writes and works in rural Ohio and New York.