Writers tackled themes of displacement, disability, war and incarceration and students performed compilations of pop, jazz and classical piano at the inaugural biannual Lannan Literary Festival from March 19 to 21.

Georgetown University’s Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice hosted the three-day festival, titled “The Writer in the World,” in collaboration with the Disability Cultural Center and the Prisons and Justice Initiative. The festival included a mix of student performances, including The Georgetown University Jazz Ensemble and numerous Georgetown a capella groups, and discussions with Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling authors.

Acapella groups, including the Saxatones and the GraceNotes, sang a mix of classic and modern hits, while the Georgetown University Jazz Ensemble performed with both their full 20-piece ensemble and their jazz quartet.

Aminatta Forna, director of the festival and the Lannan Center, said the center wanted to host a more engaging event for students. 

“For many years the Lannan Center has held an annual symposium,” Forna wrote to The Hoya. “However, we wanted to do something with which students could more fully engage as participants and not just audience members. The Lannan Center’s mission in the broadest possible terms is to bring people to books and a festival is a wonderful way to do that.” 

The festival’s first day centered around the theme of  “The Writer Displaced” and featured author Viet Thanh Nguyen. Nguyen discussed the development of his memoir, “A Man of Two Faces,” and the TV adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Sympathizer.” 

Nguyen touched on topics such as the experience of being a Vietnamese refugee, the collective memory of the Vietnam War, cultural issues within the United States and the power of literature as a site of truth. 

Nguyen said he struggled to reconcile the idealization of his parents in his memoir while also acknowledging their common experiences as Vietnamese refugees.

“It took a long time to try to figure out how to both recognize the individuality of my parents’ experiences and then also the representational aspect of those experiences as well,” Nguyen said at the event. “The book is about both paying my respects to my parents but also treating them not just as human beings but as a part of history, and recognizing that as being a part of history, they’re not unique.” 

The second day of the festival, titled “Disability Worlds,” featured Sara Nović, author of the New York Times bestseller “True Biz,” a story of romantic, political and familial shifts told against the backdrop of a residential school for the deaf. Nović said it is important to acknowledge the diversity of experiences in the deaf community and to recognize the importance of increasing the presence of stories written by deaf people. 

“The next step would be to let deaf people write their stories and see what happens,” Nović said at the event through an ASL interpreter. “This one book can’t do everything. It’s just a drop in the bucket and I think the best part about the deaf community is that we are so diverse and multicultural and we are so interwoven together and so that’s what we need to see now.” 

The final day of the festival, entitled “The World Outside/The World Within,” featured writers Reginald Dwayne Betts, author of the collection of poetry and American Book Award-winning “Felon,” and Zeke Caligiuri, a distinguished activist and author of the book “This is Where I Am,” in a discussion about the intersection of literature and the prison system. Betts and Caligiuri recounted their own experiences as formerly incarcerated individuals and their journeys to becoming writers. 

Betts said that writers have the power to push back against the isolation experienced in prisons and that he often has to combat the pressure placed on incarcerated writers to write stories that play into stereotypical narratives.

“I do think that one of the values of being a writer is that you can push back against that isolation, but I think one of the challenges of this idea, as writers who have written about incarceration, is the kind of stories that get you paid aren’t necessarily the kind of stories that get you free,” Betts said. “I feel like I have to fight the desire to tell the expected tales.”

Forna said the writers tied the weekend’s various events back to “The Writer in the World” theme by addressing complicated ideas from around the globe and positioning themselves as effectors of change.

“Much contemporary writing can be narrow and inwardly focused,” Forna wrote. “We wanted writers who looked outside themselves, whose writing tackles big themes and ideas and who see the writer’s role as valuable in effecting change, perhaps, or else promoting understanding or the profoundly important work of simply bearing witness.”

Nola Goodwin contributed to reporting.