Drawing from their work as editors, the two poets will reflect on the role of literature in the advancement of intellectual and cultural modernity in Africa and the United States.

A poet, translator, and essayist, Daniel Simon is assistant director and editor in chief of World Literature Today magazine at the University of Oklahoma, where he also serves on the English, International Studies, and Judaic Studies faculty. The author of two previous verse collections, “Cast Off” (2015) and “After Reading Everything” (2016), his third book of poems, “Under a Gathering Sky,” is new from Stephen F. Austin State University Press.

Chibueze Darlington Anuonye, a P.hD student in the English Department, is the curator of “Selfies and Signatures: An Afro Anthology of Short Stories,” co-editor of “Daybreak: An Anthology of Nigerian Short Fiction” and editor of “Through the Eye of a Needle: Art in the Time of Coronavirus.” Anuonye was longlisted for the 2018 Babishai Niwe African Poetry Award. “Unbound,” his co-edited anthology of contemporary Nigerian poetry (with Nduka Otiono), is forthcoming.