Shahrnush Parsipur, author of the novel, Women Without Men, died at the age of 80 on 3 July 2026. Born in Iran, Parsipur gained recognition for her fiction but in doing so attracted the scrutiny of the Iranian authorities, leading to four brutal periods of incarceration both during the shah's reign and post-revolution Iran. Parsipur lived in exile in the U.S. from 1994 on and was Brown's 2003-2004 International Writers Project fellow; during her time in residence at Brown, the Literary Arts department brought to campus the artist Shirin Neshat, with whom Parsipur would collaborate on a film adaptation of Parsipur's famous novel.

Alison C. Rollins, who graduated from Brown's MFA program in 2023, has been selected as 2026 recipient of the Whiting Award in Poetry. Congratulations, Alison!

Based on her course through which she engages Brown students with writers in the local community schools, Eleni Sikelianos, professor of Literary Arts in Poetry, has been recognized as a recipient of Brown University's Howard Swearer Engaged Faculty Award.