Inner Loop Panel: Identity and Belonging in Literature

Seeking and achieving both a sense of self as an individual and a sense of belonging among others are two sides of the same coin. Our understanding and perception of these elements can have a profound effect on our lives, on our cultures, and on society as a whole. Writers often grapple with the nuances of the human condition, and indeed many of its mysteries can unfold in stories that explore identity and belonging. Tope Folarin engages with local authors Patricia Coral, Majda Gama, and Varun Gauri to discuss the challenges and triumphs of self-identification.Tope Folarin is a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington DC. He serves as Director of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Lannan Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Georgetown University. He is the recipient of the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Whiting Award for Fiction, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, among other awards. His reviews, essays and cultural criticism have been featured in The Atlantic, The Baffler, BBC, The Drift, High Country News, Lithub, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, Vulture, The Washington Post and elsewhere.Tope serves as a board member of the Avalon Theater in Washington DC, the Pen/Faulkner Foundation, and as a member of the President’s Council of Pathfinder. In addition, he will serve as the Bauder Writer-in-Residence in Howard County, Maryland for the 2024-25 school year and as the inaugural critic-at-large for The Georgia Review in 2025 He was educated at Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Masters’ degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. His debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, was published by Simon & Schuster.Varun Gauri was The Inner Loop’s March Author’s Corner spotlight. He worked for more than two decades on development economics and behavioral economics. He now teaches at Princeton University and lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland. He was a summer writer-in-residence for The Inner Loop. His debut novel, For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus, won the 2024 Carol Trawick Fiction Prize, was selected for NPR’s Books We Love 2024, and is a finalist for Foreword INDIES 2024 Book of the Year in General Adult Fiction. PURCHASE BOOKS HERE: https://politics-prose.com/inner-loop-panel2025Patricia Coral was The Inner Loop’s April Author’s Corner spotlight. She is a bilingual Puerto Rican writer. She holds a BA in Hispanic Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, an MA in Spanish from the InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico, and an MFA in Creative Writing from American University, where she received the Myra Sklarew Award and where she was Editor-in-Chief of FOLIO. Patricia writes creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, but frequently her words find their home in-between. The former director of events for Politics and Prose Bookstore, she has contributed to numerous literary magazines and her work has been supported by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her memoir Women Surrounded by Water is her first book and it was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography.Majda Gama was The Inner Loop’s May Author’s Corner spotlight. She is the award-winning author of In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls (Wandering Aengus Press) and The Call of Paradise, (Two Sylvia’s, 2023). Her poetry has been honored with the Graybeal Gowen award for Virginia poets from Shenandoah and the Gregory Djanikian scholar award for poetry from Adroit. *recorded 6/7/2025