© Brian Pavlich

Alison Pelegrin is the recipient of fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louisiana Board of Regents, the Foundation for Louisiana, and the Academy of American Poets, who awarded her a Poets Laureate Fellowship to support the Lifelines Poetry Project, which supports her work offering poetry workshops in Louisiana Prisons. Pelegrin’s two most recent poetry collections are Our Lady of Bewilderment and Waterlines, both with LSU Press. Pelegrin is Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University and served as Louisiana Poet Laureate from 2023-2025. 

Schedule

10:15 am to 11:00 am
Outside Museum, West Tent
Poet Laureate to Poet Laureate
Gina Ferrara and Alison Pelegrin

11:15 am to Noon
Cavalier House Books Tent
Book Signing

1:15 pm to 2:00 pm
State Library, Second Floor, Meeting Room
A Conversation with Julie Kane
Julie Kane with moderator Alison Pelegrin

3:00 pm to 3:45 pm
State Library, First Floor, Seminar Center
Inside Words: What Our Incarcerated Students Taught Us
Bestselling author Wally Lamb and poet Alison Pelegrin discuss the transformative power of teaching writing workshops in prison settings, revealing the surprising wisdom and literary insight they gained from their incarcerated students.

Our Lady of Bewilderment: Poems

Winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award

Whether by way of visitations from secular saints, hauntings from childhood, or back talk from “indelicate broads,” a complicated world speaks to and through Alison Pelegrin in Our Lady of Bewilderment. An unusual blend of mystic-comedian, Pelegrin explores physical and psychic beauty and terror without losing sight of wonder. Drawing on the aid of beings real and imaginary, Our Lady of Bewilderment offers humorous, honest, and intimate poems contemplating life’s traumas and joys, filtered through the religion-infused secular traditions of Louisiana.