Deep Vellum Music & Literature Festival: Saturday+ Pass
The Deep Vellum Music & Literature Festival is a multi-day, multi-venue celebration that will bring voices from across Texas and around the world to audiences through literary readings, author panels, spoken word, live music performances, and community activations.
Based in the Deep Ellum cultural district in Dallas, Texas, this festival will expand well beyond the Deep Vellum bookstore, engaging major cultural venues across the neighborhood to celebrate the area’s rich music history and its ongoing drive to uplift the arts. Stages and venues include: Sons of Hermann Hall, Ruins, Undermain Theatre, Life in Deep Ellum, Kettle Art Gallery, Deep Ellum Art Co., AllGood Cafe, Poets Books, Deep Ellum Community Center, and Deep Vellum Books.
If you are not able to make it to the festival this year, but want to support the community programming work done by Deep Vellum, you can make a tax-deductible donation here.
Saturday Night Headliner Show + Daytime Festival Events
Access to the Saturday Night Headliner Show with Hanif Abdurraqib, Jamila Woods, Lawrence Burney, and Damoyee at Sons of Hermann Hall.
Access to writer panels, readings, and music performances at venues throughout Deep Ellum on during the day Saturday July 11 and Sunday July 12.*
This pass does not include access to the Friday Night Kickoff event at Ruins on July 10.*
Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib is an award-winning poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His newest release, There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House, 2024) was a New York Times Bestseller and longlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His previous book, A Little Devil In America (Random House, 2021) was a winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and the Gordon Burn Prize. In 2021, Abdurraqib was named a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2024 was named a Windham-Campbell Prize recipient. He is a graduate of Beechcroft High School.
Jamila Woods
Jamila Woods is a musician, poet, and multidisciplinary artist from the South Side of Chicago. Her critically acclaimed debut album HEAVN – an ode to Blackness, girlhood, and home – was released by JagJaguwar Records in 2017. Her sophomore project, LEGACY! LEGACY!, features twelve tracks named after writers, thinkers, and visual artists who have influenced the creator’s life and work – including James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni and Frida Kahlo. Her most recent album, Water Made Us, is a genre-blending song cycle on love and the wisdom of surrender.
Jamila has been featured on NPR’s Tiny Desk, CBS This Morning, and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She has shared stages with Corinne Bailey Rae, Rafael Saadiq, Bonobo, Common, Chance the Rapper, Brittany Howard, Macklemore, and many others. An award-winning poet, Jamila’s work often blurs boundaries between poem and song. As cultural critic Doreen St. Felix writes, “It makes you wish all singers were poets.”
Lawrence Burney
Lawrence Burney is a writer, editor, critic, and the founder of True Laurels, an independent magazine covering Baltimore’s music and culture scene. His work has appeared in publications such as New York Magazine, GQ, Washington Post and Pitchfork. He has also worked as an editor at The Fader, a staff writer at VICE, and an editor/reporter at The Baltimore Banner. His first book, No Sense in Wishing, a collection of essays, was published in July 2025 via Atria Books.
Damoyee
DAMOYEE is an award-winning singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, and live streamer from Dallas, TX who is known for her remarkable musicianship, evocative lyricism, luminous voice, and sonic versatility. Born with the rare gift of absolute pitch, she began playing piano at the age of two, and performing original music at age 10, and quickly built a reputation for immersive live performances built through layered instrumentation and vocal harmonies.
Her 2019 album The Whole Truth charted internationally and earned recognition from Dallas Observer and Central Track, while her 2024 project PURPLEXED explored vulnerability, self-discovery, and coming of age through autobiographical storytelling and atmospheric production.
DAMOYEE's work has received acclaim from the GRAMMYs, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, EBONY, American Songwriter, PAPER, Consequence, and FLOOD. She has performed at festivals including New Orleans Jazz Fest and Gov Ball, and has collaborated with artists such as Bryson Tiller and DC The Don. Her music and compositions have also been featured through partnerships with brands including TikTok, Meta, Coca-Cola, AT&T, FX x Hulu, Cartoon Network, Walgreens, Bose, and Roland.
Her vivid blend of classical training, jazz fluency, soulful vocals, folk intimacy, and experimental production places her at the forefront of modern independent music.
