Darrell Bourque was born in southwest Louisiana in 1942. He is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Until We Talk (Etruscan Press, 2024); Migrare (University of Louisiana Press, 2019); Where I Waited (Self-published, 2016); Megan's Guitar and Other Poems from Acadie (University of Louisiana Press, 2013); Call and Response: Conversations in Verse (Texas Review Press, 2010), coauthored with Jack B. Bedell; In Ordinary Light: New and Selected Poems (University of Louisiana Press, 2010); From the Other Side: Henriette Delille (Self-published, 2019); and The Blue Boat (University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2004).

Bourque is the recipient of the 2014 Louisiana Book Festival Writer Award and the 2019 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Humanist of the Year Award, among other honors. He was named Artist of the Year by the Acadiana Center for the Arts in 2001 and served as both president of the National Association for Humanities Education and editor-in-chief of its journal Interdisciplinary Humanities.

Bourque served as Louisiana's poet laureate for two terms from 2007 to 2011. A professor emeritus in English and interdisciplinary humanities at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, he lives in St. Landry Parish.

FEATURING

Patrice Melnick
Patrice Melnick is a writer, arts administrator and community activist. Following Hurricane Katrina, Melnick moved from New Orleans to Grand Coteau, Louisiana, where she opened up a gift shop and started a literary reading and open mic series. In 2010 she established the nonprofit organization the Festival of Words Cultural Arts Collective which promotes the literary arts in the surrounding rural communities.

Melnick taught English and creative writing at Xavier University in New Orleans, where she founded one of the first creative writing programs at a Historically Black University, for thirteen years before moving to Grand Coteau. Patrice Melnick holds a B.A. in English from the University of Texas at Austin, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Her poems and essays have appeared in many literary journals including Prism International, Red Brick Review and Grain. She has been honored for both her writing and community contributions. Her poem :Tattoos and Birthmarks," was awarded 3rd prize in Federico Garcia Lorca Poetry Prize. She received the Public Humanities Programming award from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities and was named one of the Louisianians of 2019 by Louisiana Life Magazine. Patrice Melnick has published a memoir, Po-boy Contraband: from Diagnosis Back to Life (Catalyst Press) and a poetry chapbook, City of Hey Baby (Finishing Line Press.) She lives in Grand Coteau, and now serves as Director of the Opelousas Museum and Interpretative Center. Patrice is breathing new life into the museum.

Although she has moved on, Festival of Words will never forget its debt to our founder, the amazing Patrice Melnick.

Dr. Toby Daspit is currently Associate Professor of Education and Co-Director of the National Writing Project of Acadiana at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where he holds the Doris B. and Mike Aderman Board of Regents Endowed Professorship. He is a Lafayette Parish School System alumnus (J. W. Faulk, N. P. Moss, and Northside High) graduating high school in 1984. Toby enrolled in the University of Southwestern Louisiana that Fall and after one year in pre-law, he realized that teaching was a passion that could really make a difference with another passion, political activism, and changed his major to Social Studies Education. He was the Outstanding Graduate of the College of Education in Fall, 1988, and began his teaching career as an English/Social Studies teacher of the gifted in 1989 in Iberia Parish. In 1993 he received his Master's of Education in Secondary Education with a minor in Gifted Education. After six years of teaching American literature, middle school English, African American Studies, and World Philosophy, Toby received a graduate assistantship to pursue his Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction at Louisiana State University where his concentration was curriculum theorizing. He completed his doctoral work in Fall of 1998. That semester he was appointed Assistant Professor of Teaching, Learning and Leadership at Western Michigan University where he worked for six years and was promoted to Associate Professor.

In 2004 Toby returned to Lafayette as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2007.