Working Class Literature Festival (DC)
Registration Info
Registration is not Required
About this event
May 1st Friday
6-7pm Check in and Books and Merch
7-8:30pm More Than A Living: Poetry of Work and Workers
8:30-10:30pm Opening Reception
May 2nd Saturday
11am onwards: meet other organizations and check out our books!
1-2:30pm Seen and Unseen: How Work Lives on the Page and in the Mind
Speakers will cover the following themes: what is working class literature, what is its history, how it is used in labor organizing, what are the worker issues in public imagination
2:45-4:15pm No Struggle Stands Alone: Labor, Identity, and Survival in Violent Economies
Labor does not exist in a vacuum. This session explores how working-class resistance interacts with race, empire, occupation, and global financial and technological systems, and what solidarity looks like across these fault lines
4:30-5:30pm Concert with @dc_sabha
Performers will perform songs and poetry from workers’ movements across South Asia. The performances aim to prompt more general conversations about labor and cultural production.
5:45-7:15pm From Page to Picket Line: Everyday Struggles, Extraordinary Organizing
From 19th-century miners to modern warehouse floors, working-class fiction has always asked the same question: what does it take to fight back? This session brings together works that explore labor struggles, workplace organizing, the everyday textures of working life, and what literature can teach us about collective power.