Deep Vellum Music & Literature Fest begins a new chapter by turning up the volume

For one long July weekend, Deep Ellum will do what Deep Ellum has always done best: gather artists, make noise and bolster culture in the city.

From July 10-12, the inaugural Deep Vellum Music & Literature Festival, presented by Deep Vellum Books, will spread across 11 venues with more than 20 events, performances and activations, bringing together visiting writers and musicians alongside a deep bench of North Texas talent. If the premise sounds almost too perfect for this part of Dallas — books, bands, poetry, conversation and a neighborhood built on creative friction — that’s because it’s by design.

The festival’s scale is impressive on its own. According to programming director Madison Ford, the showcase will feature 22 visiting artists alongside 33 writers, poets and musicians from the DFW area and beyond. But what makes the event feel especially suited to Deep Ellum is the way the lineup is built to blur categories. This is a festival where readings spill into performances, where panels sit next to concerts and where language is treated less like something confined to a page than something with breath, pulse and a backbeat.

Ford says the festival’s goal of intentionally intersecting art is embodied in the festival’s two marquee headliners, Hanif Abdurraqib and Jamila Woods.

“We have two dream headliners for our inaugural year,” she tells the Observer. “Hanif Abdurraqib is not only a moving poet and incisive essayist, but seeing him read his work and engage in public dialogue is a singular experience. You feel held in rapture by his thoughtfulness.”

That alone would be enough to anchor a festival. But pairing Abdurraqib with Woods makes the event’s mission even clearer.

“Jamila’s work as a poet and musician perfectly encapsulates the spirit of this festival, showing how music and literature are in conversation with each other,” Ford says. “Her work feels like an ode to the performance of language.”

Their headliner show at Sons of Hermann Hall will also feature Lawrence Burney and Dallas music artist DAMOYEE, a local presence Ford folds into the festival’s larger sense of occasion.

“I can already tell it will feel like magic is in the room,” Ford says.

That phrase — magic in the room — lands because the festival seems intent on building exactly that kind of atmosphere, not just selling tickets to isolated events. Ford has placed serious emphasis on Dallas artists and writers, making the festival feel grounded in place rather than parachuted in. One of the most intriguing examples is an ongoing public poetry reading outside Poets Books. Ford calls it “poetry busking,” with Dallas-area poets rotating through the courtyard and sending their work out into the street.

“We have a killer poetry scene here in Dallas, and we wanted to create a piece of programming that featured their work,” she says.

The image is a good one: poems drifting into Deep Ellum foot traffic, catching passersby off guard, literature acting like live music.

Stacked schedule

That local investment runs throughout the schedule. Dallas poets, including Aaron Brown, Alissa Park, April Sojourner Truth Walker, LA Johnson, Mike Soto, Myca Williamson, Pierre Minar and Reverie Koniecki, are part of the lineup. Dallas bands will play throughout the day Saturday at Deep Ellum Art Co., and local musicians, including DAMOYEE, D-CLAIM, Cayuga All-Stars, Ceci Ceci, Kirk Thurmond and Mayhill, help keep the festival rooted in North Texas even as it reaches outward.

And it does reach outward. Ford says the lineup was designed to reflect Deep Vellum’s publishing mission, which has long championed translated literature, global perspectives and voices that don’t always get the biggest stage.

“Powerful writing and art are being produced in pockets all over the world, and I wanted that simultaneously local and international sensibility present at the festival,” she says.

The roster backs that up, with writers from across the United States joined by voices connected to Nigeria, Singapore, Canada, Mexico, Bolivia, Haiti, Iraq and Croatia through the broader Deep Vellum orbit.

The kickoff event at Ruins on Friday points directly to that mission. Ford describes it as “an ode to the type of literary work Deep Vellum and the Dallas area is known for,” featuring a panel on Latin American translated literature with Rodrigo Hasbún, Carmen Boullosa and Robin Myers, followed by performances from Ceci Ceci and Cayuga All-Stars. It’s a smart opening statement: translation, live performance and Dallas institutions working in concert.

The weekend only gets denser from there. Ford promises panels on craft, vampires, wandering and writing that stares down dystopian realities, plus a Texas Book Festival-hosted conversation featuring Karan Mahajan and Maria Reva. There’s also a Sunday morning poetry reading with Sophia Terazawa, Oksana Lutsyshyna and Robin Myers accompanied by jazz band D-CLAIM, which sounds like the kind of event that could either quietly unravel you or set your whole day right. Ford, wisely, adds one important selling point to the dreaminess: “There will be air conditioning.”

Still, the deepest appeal of this festival may be its sense of civic affection. Ford hopes the event honors not just Deep Vellum’s literary world, but Deep Ellum itself — its small businesses, its artists and the social energy that has long made the neighborhood one of Dallas’ most vital creative districts.

“I hope it brings a sense of community and delight to Dallasites and visitors from around the world,” she says.

That’s a lovely ambition, but also a plausible one, because if this festival works the way it looks like it might, Deep Ellum won’t just host a weekend of readings and shows. It will remind Dallas that art sounds better when it’s shared, and that the distance between a song and a sentence is sometimes only a stage light away.

Tickets and passes are available now through Deep Vellum’s festival page.