Recapping the 2024 Neustadt Lit Fest
Photos by Parker Buske and Michelle Johnson
The 2024 Neustadt Lit Fest, hosted by World Literature Today, took place on the University of Oklahoma campus October 21–23. Nine public events—featuring more than a dozen writers, artists, and scholars—attracted more than a thousand attendees, including several hundred students from OU, the Norman Public Schools, and Colorado Academy.
Neustadt laureate Ananda Devi kicked off the first day of the lit fest with a keynote talk, “Writer / Woman,” followed by a Q&A with OU professor Julie-Françoise Tolliver and her students in the Neustadt seminar devoted to Devi’s work.
The following morning, the nine writers and artists serving as jury members for the 2025 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s & Young Adult Literature convened to deliberate and vote on their nominees. That evening, Kathy Neustadt formally announced Cherie Dimaline as the twelfth laureate of the NSK Prize at a reception and book-signing event. (Dimaline will headline the lit fest in October 2025, at which she will formally receive the award.)
Day two also featured two additional conversation events with Devi: the first with OU professor Andreea Marculescu, hosted by the Department of Women’s & Gender Studies, focusing on gender issues in Devi’s work; and the second with Devi, her husband Harrikrisna Anenden, and Professor Tolliver on The Children of Troumaron, the film adaptation of Devi’s novel Eve out of Her Ruins.
On day three, the festival culminated with a roundtable panel on Devi’s work featuring Kazim Ali, Will Evans, Julie-Françoise Tolliver, and Jeffrey Zuckerman; readings by the NSK jury; a translation workshop for OU students taught by Professor Ali; and the Neustadt Prize ceremony. During the gala evening, University of Oklahoma president Joseph Harroz Jr. offered a video greeting, and Bettina Gardelles, cultural attaché of the French consulate in Houston, paid tribute to Devi’s achievement. After receiving the prize and its symbolic silver feather from the Neustadt family, Devi offered moving acceptance remarks and received a standing ovation from the audience.
