Opening Keynote | Rania Mamoun

Rania Mamoun is a Sudanese activist and bestselling writer of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.  She completed Something Evergreen Called Life, a poetry manuscript written during COVID-19 quarantine, translated into English by Yasmine Seale and published by Action Books in March 2023.  Rania has published two novels to great international acclaim, Green Flash and Son of the Sun, and Thirteen Months of Sunrise, a short story collection which was shortlisted for the 2020 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

Rania continues to organize for democracy in Sudan. Her writing has appeared in English, Korean, French, and Spanish translation.

Opening Keynote | Voldoymyr Rafeyenko

Volodymyr Rafeyenko is an award-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, literary and film critic from Kyiv, Ukraine. He graduated from Donetsk University with a degree in Russian philology and culture studies, and from 1992 to 2018, he wrote his works in Russian, was mainly published in Russia, and was considered a representative of Russian literature. Following the outbreak of Russian aggression in Ukraine, Volodymyr left Donetsk and moved to a town near Kyiv where he wrote Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love, his first novel in the Ukrainian language, which was shortlisted for the Taras Shevchenko National Prize—Ukraine’s highest award in arts and culture. Volodymyr learned Ukrainian from scratch, and has dedicated himself to speaking Ukrainian, rather than Russian, his mother-tongue, as an act of resistance and perseverance.

Closing Keynote | Sunil Iyengar

Sunil Iyengar directs the Office of Research & Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. Under his leadership, the office has produced dozens of research reports, hosted events and webinars, and established research partnerships with the U.S Census Bureau, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the National Center for Education Statistics, and the National Science Foundation. His office also leads agency strategic planning, program evaluations, and performance measurement. Iyengar and his team have designed and implemented three long-term research agendas, founded a national data repository for the arts, and launched two award programs for arts researchers, including the NEA Research Labs initiative. He chaired a federal Interagency Task Force on the Arts and Human Development from 2011 to 2023, and his office provides research support to Creative Forces: NEA Military Arts Healing Network. Iyengar oversees a research funding partnership with the National Institutes of Health as part of Sound Health, an initiative of the Kennedy Center and National Institutes of Health in association with the NEA. Guided by that initiative, Iyengar’s office supports the Sound Health Network, in partnership with the University of California San Francisco. Iyengar formerly was an editor and reporter covering the biomedical research, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries.