WANT to find out more about poet and Gothic author Edgar Allan Poe's links to Ayrshire?
Enrica Jang, the executive director of the The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum in Baltimore, will join forces with Ayrshire's own Poetic Justice Productions for a special event next month.
The free illustrated highlight talk will be held in the Robertson Room at the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in Alloway on Wednesday, February 25 from 2.30pm.
Orphaned at the age of two, Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia.
Their household was shaped as much by ambition and commerce as by culture.
John Allan, an Ayrshire-born merchant, provided Poe with education and opportunity - and even brought him across the Atlantic as a child, spending time in Irvine and Kilmarnock.
But the relationship between guardian and child would ultimately fracture.
The tension between sensitivity and pragmatism, art and industry, and belonging and exile left a lasting mark on Poe’s life and work. It contributed to his restless adulthood and his mysterious death in Baltimore in 1849.
Award-winning Poetic Justice will share the Allan family’s history in Scotland and place Poe’s upbringing within its original cultural context.
Together, the presenters trace the transatlantic ties that shaped Poe’s early life and literary imagination.
Like Robert Burns, Poe emerged from modest and uncertain circumstances and wrote with emotional intensity and fierce independence.
Both writers transformed personal hardship into lasting literary legacy resonant for their respective nations far beyond their lifetimes.
The program will explore Poe’s Scottish connections, his Baltimore family origins, and the broader nineteenth-century world of migration, commerce, and cultural exchange that shaped his work. A discussion and audience Q&A will follow.
Enrica is executive director at Poe Baltimore, stewarding The Edgar Allan Poe House & Museum and producing the International Edgar Allan Poe Festival & Awards.
She launched both the festival—now in its eighth year—and the Saturday ‘Visiter’ Awards, an international competition for creative works inspired by Poe, judged by representatives from Poe sites in Richmond, the Bronx, and Baltimore.
She is currently leading the expansion of Poe House, a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a new visitor centre and museum at the historic site.
In addition to her work for Poe, Enrica is a writer, also the founder and editor-in-chief of Red Stylo Media, an independent comics publisher producing literary and music-themed anthologies and original series.
She holds a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Professional Writing from the Savannah College of Art and Design.
Booking for Highlight Talks at Robert Burns Birthplace Museum is recommended to guarantee entry.
Bookings can be made at www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/highlight-talk-enrica-jang-on-allan-vs-poe-between-homes-and-nations-tickets-1979713537483.
Due to limited capacity in the venue, any available seats will be allocated to attendees who have not booked on a first come, first served basis, meaning that entry cannot be guaranteed without booking.
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