Paul Tran is a slam poet and author who has won the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from Poetry Magazine and the Poetry Foundation, and the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize.

Speak honestly, be brief and listen from the heart. These are three main rules of Way of Council, a facilitated dialogue that brings total strangers together to listen and share stories about a given topic, theme or prompt. Come prepared to be present, listen and share stories!

This year’s Diversity Celebration Festival on Sanford Mall will feature music by DJ Trellz, special diverse menus at the food trucks, museum displays, dance lessons, giveaways and more.

Jakeya Nasrin, App State student majoring in international business, will share her experience of living on three different continents and the power of language.

Malikia Cherubala, an App State student majoring in community and regional planning, will share information about the Democratic Republic of Congo and its various cultures, languages and ethnicity, food and music.

Participants in this generative writing workshop will read “Autobiography of Eve” by the poet Ansel Elkins. “I did not fall from grace,” Eve says. “I charged toward freedom.” We will write and share our own “Autobiography of...” poems, and in doing so, will talk about the myths constructed about us and how, from the classroom to the workplace, we reinforce or subvert these myths.