UC Riverside will be hosting its 41st annual Writers Week this week, from Monday, Feb. 12 to Saturday, Feb. 17. Writers Week is the longest-running free literary event in all of California and is comprised of readings, question-and-answers and presentations from 20 authors from around the world. This year’s notables include Maxine Hong Kingston, National Medal of Arts recipient and author of the acclaimed novel “The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts,” and headliner Roxane Gay, author of New York Times best-selling essay book “Bad Feminist: Essays.”

Writers Week has taken place at UCR since 1977, with former speakers including Kenyan novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o, former UC Riverside and current New York University Professor Fred Moten and Vietnamese American writer Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of 2015’s “The Sympathizer.”

Free and open to the public, speakers will be located at screening room INTS 1128 and will present for one hour. The first poet to commence Writers Week will be Tess Taylor on Monday at 2:30 p.m. Wrapping up the event will be Gay on Saturday at 7 p.m.

Courtesy of Writers Week