Ninth Annual Literary Festival
May 27-28, 2022 on Zoom. Free and open to the public.
National Undergraduate Art and Writing Contest Winners Reading
May 27, 7:30 PM EST: https://princeton.zoom.us/j/96337869049
A reading and exhibition by the winners of our national contest judged by Anya Pearson (poetry), Sophie Gee (prose), and Mark Thomas Gibson (art).
Literary and Art Agents Career Panel
May 28, 7:30 PM EST: https://princeton.zoom.us/j/97689042598
Panel discussion and Q&A with literary agents Stacy Testa ‘10 and Iris Blasi ‘03, art consultant Meghan Duval ‘93 and Princeton University Art Museum curator James Steward.
ABOUT OUR GUESTS
IRIS BLASI
Iris Blasi joined Arc Literary Management in 2021 after four years at the Carol Mann Agency. Prior to becoming a literary agent, she was Marketing Director and Senior Editor at Pegasus Books. She has held a variety of editorial, marketing, publicity, and consulting roles during her publishing career. She was an English major with certificates in American Studies and Gender Studies, and she holds a master’s degree from NYU in Humanities and Social Thought. Her writing on books, arts, and culture has appeared in outlets including The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Publishers Weekly, BUST, and more. She represents a broad list of nonfiction authors in the categories of biography, memoir, history, science/nature, pop culture, cultural criticism, current events, politics, and narrative nonfiction who write about everything from non-monogamy to mental health in sports. She has a particular penchant for books stemming from a quirky journalistic, academic, or personal obsession.
STACY TESTA
Stacy Testa is a literary agent at Writers House in NYC, where she represents a wide range of adult fiction (literary fiction, historical, book club) and nonfiction (memoir, wellness, narrative), including New York Times bestselling authors such as Kim Michele Richardson, Sarah Wilson, and Karen Marie Moning. She also spent several years as Writers House’s Media Rights Manager, handling film and TV adaptation rights for the agency. She graduated from Princeton in 2010 with a degree in English and a certificate in Theater.
MEGHAN DUVAL
Meghan is an expert art consultant. Her experience includes working both as a professional artist and in the business of art. She brings vision, integrity and years of art-world relationships to her projects.
Classically trained at Princeton University in both the art-and-architecture and visual arts, Meghan graduated cum laude with several academic awards. She worked as a visual artist until 1996. Her work appears in corporate and private collections; her paintings/drawings/etchings have also been exhibited by SAP, Inc., Bergdorf Goodman, and Harrah’s Casino Atlantic City.
Employed by Sotheby’s from 1994 to 2000, Meghan worked on the estates of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, William Randolph Hearst and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as well as properties belonging to Chase Manhattan Bank and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.
As both creator and purchaser of arts, Meghan knows how to maximize art budgets. She collaborates with architects, interior designers and facilities managers.
JAMES STEWARD
James Steward joined the Princeton University Art Museum as its director in April 2009. Since that time, Steward has launched a number of initiatives to position the Museum at the heart of the University experience, including expanding the Museum's program of exhibitions and educational activities as well as its open hours and outreach efforts. He is a Lecturer with the rank of Professor in the Department of Art and Archaeology, and a Faculty Fellow of Rockefeller College. Prior to coming to Princeton, he served from 1998 to 2009 as director of the University of Michigan Museum of Art, where he oversaw the planning, construction, and fundraising for a major new building, recognized as one of the year's 10 best new buildings for 2010 by the American Institute of Architects.
Steward holds his B.A. from the University of Virginia and a doctorate in the History of Art from Trinity College, Oxford University, where he studied with Francis Haskell. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the British Council, the American Ireland Fund, and the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation. He has been a fellow of the Huntington Library, and received the Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Service from the University of California, Berkeley.