In its workshops, programming, and day-to-day interactions, Literary Arts is committed to fostering an atmosphere of inclusiveness and respect for all students, faculty, staff and visitors. We are committed to the inclusion of diverse perspectives, identities, histories, and ways of knowing, and to the critical examination and exploration, through written word, performance, digital media, and scholarship, of the roles of power and privilege in our community and beyond. Literary Arts embraces the importance of increasing representation, voice, and participation for all identity groups in our classrooms and performance spaces. As such, the department formed, beginning in 2016, a Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan Committee comprised of faculty, staff, and students, with the goal of examining how Literary Arts can best ensure ongoing inclusion and diversity in its graduate and undergraduate programs, its MFA admissions, its hiring, and in its engagement with the wider community. The department embraces the university’s Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion plan, which acknowledges that “institutions of higher education, including Brown, have traditionally failed to fully include people of all races, ethnicities, creeds, socioeconomic classes, gender identities, sexual orientations, and disability statuses” and outlines steps that must be taken in order to remediate past practices. By ensuring that the Literary Arts community itself is fully inclusive, and by ensuring that all members of the community are fully valued and supported, the department seeks to support the university’s goals.