Baylor University’s Beall Poetry Festival is a three-day celebration of contemporary poetry, with poetry readings, a panel discussion, and the Virginia Beall Ball Lecture on Contemporary Poetry. The festival is supported by the John A. and DeLouise McClelland Beall Endowed Fund, established in 1994 by Mrs. Virginia B. Ball to honor her parents and to encourage the writing and appreciation of poetry.
2025 Participants
Carl Phillips studied Greek and Latin at Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor’s degree. He subsequently earned an MAT in Latin and classical humanities from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and an MA in creative writing from Boston University. Having taught at Washington University for many years, he lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Victoria Chang holds degrees from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, and Stanford University, as well as an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She currently serves as the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and as the director of Poetry@Tech.
Christian Wiman earned a bachelor’s degree from Washington and Lee University and studied at Stanford University on a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. He currently serves as the Clement-Muehl Professor of Communication Arts at Yale Divinity School. From 2003 until 2013, he was the editor of Poetry, the premiere magazine for poetry in the English-speaking world.