English and World Languages News and Events

ENWL Calendar of Events, Spring 2026

January 21—African American Studies Club Interest Meeting

Palmer Commons (English Lounge) 3:30pm

AAS minors and all UM students interested in creating community among peers interested in the history and study of people of African descent are encouraged to attend. Open to all UM students.

January 22 – UM Tower Mixer

Farmer Hall 5:00 pm

If you are interested in being a part of creating the 2026 UM Tower, come hang out with others who are also interested.
Free food and drinks will be included!

February 3 – Sappy Open Mic Night

Farmer Stage 5:00pm

Make Valentines cards, share love stories or poems, and enjoy lovely refreshments! Co-hosted by the Montevallo Honors Organization and the Tower.

February 18 – Blind Date With a Book

Palmer Commons (English Lounge) 1pm-4 pm

Hosted by Sigma Tau Dalta (English Honor Society)

February 19 (recurring) – AAS Reset

Palmer Commons (English Lounge) 12pm-5pm

Beginning Thursday, February 19 and continuing monthly, the African American Studies program invites all ENWL majors and minors to the Humanities Hall Commons anytime from 2:00 – 5:00 PM to reset from the week and rejuvenate for the days ahead with games, goodies, and great conversation with your peers and friends alike in ENWL. Open to all ENWL majors and minors.

Dates: 2/19, 3/12, 4/16

February 23—Novelist Barry Cole

J.A. Brown Room, Carmichael Library 3:30pm

African American Studies (AAS) invites you to join us for a book talk with alumnae Barry Michael Cole, author of One Hundred Pearls, a historically based novel that is inspired by Cole’s trip to a mass grave in Central Alabama’s Tannehill State Park. His novel tells the story of Sadie, a Black woman whose 100-year journey defies both death and her enslavers and embodies the complex experiences in racial trauma and erasure of the multitude buried and unidentified beneath the stones. Open to all UM community.

March 2—BACHE Reading: Tiphanie Yanique

J.A. Brown Room, Carmichael Library 3:30pm

Author Tiphanie Yanique will read and discuss her new work. Tiphanie is the author of the novel, Monster in the Middle, which was published in 2021 and on numerous best of the year lists. Monster in the Middle was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and is a finalist for the Townsend Prize. Her writing has won the Boston Review Prize in Fiction, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, an Academy of American Poet’s Prize and two Fulbright Scholarships. Tiphanie is also an outspoken activist on behalf of the Caribbean, having appeared on Democracy Now! with Amy Goodman, and published an op-ed in The New York Times on the US response to hurricanes in the Caribbean.

March 9—Ashley Hope Perez

Pat Scales Room, Carmichael Library 5pm

Ashley Hope Pérez is a YA novelist, youth advocate, and editor. She will discuss her new book Banned Together, a dazzling YA anthology that spotlights the transformative power of books while equipping teens to fight for the freedom to read, featuring the voices of 15 diverse, award-winning authors and illustrators.

April 8—Poetry@UM: Tina Mozelle Braziel and Jim Braziel

J.A. Brown Room, Carmichael Library 3:30pm

Tina Mozelle Braziel and Jim Braziel read and discuss their collaborative poems from Glass Cabin, a chronicle of the thirteen years they spent building their home out of secondhand tin, tornado-snapped power poles, and church glass on a ridge in rural Alabama.