Lit Fest 2025

The border is highly permeable for some and completely rigid for others, as the pandemic, various humanitarian crises, and recent elections in the West have underscored. The terror of the border remains relentless. In this generative seminar, we'll discuss and write in response to the work of (im)migrant writers who question the border and contend with its shifting, dislocating provocations. We’ll consider how and why certain bodies and literatures are (b)ordered through denial, displacement, dispossession, and detainment. And we’ll explore how we can write to confound the ideologies, policies, and practices that seek to contain us.

As the quality and readership of indie/self-published books increases, indie publishing—once considered a “less than” alternative to traditional publishing—is becoming a progressively popular choice for authors at all stages of their careers. What does it take to independently publish your book? In this seminar, we’ll explore what goes into the indie decision, the pros and cons of this publishing method, and the must-have attributes of a successful independently published book.

Using letters from the alphabet, participating writers will utilize free-association and automatic writing to generate ideas and call upon their memories to begin drafting and crafting their own lyric essays. This class will primarily be a generative space. The title of the workshop pays homage to Bobbie Louise Hawkins who published a collection of stories, essays, and memoirs of the same name with Coffee House Press in 1989 (there is no need to read this book).

Have you ever stared at a blank page and had no idea how to fill it? In this class, we'll learn how keeping a vibrant writer's notebook can provide us with material to use, whether we're trying to craft a compelling personal essay, fill a novel with vivid characters and settings, or capture the perfect image for a poem. We'll examine the notebook practices of some of the greats, including Joan Didion, Mark Twain, and Charles R. Johnson, and embark on our own journals. Bring in a fresh notebook, and we'll set it up to capture the inspiration, observations, and ideas that will fuel your next literary work.

Drawing inspiration from the idea of a palimpsest—medieval manuscripts on papyrus or parchment whose text was scraped or washed off, and then written over—the workshop will consider what is erased from the past versus what remains and how that shows up in our lives and our writing. We’ll try techniques that sample the writing of others, such as erasure or the cento, and also write from prompts that consider what parts of ourselves have been erased and written over, or how scraps of the past are embedded in the places and objects that surround us.

In this seminar, we'll contemplate what Chuck Palahniuk refers to as the big voice and little voice; we'll look at the different strategies writers have used to amplify the little voices they have to use in both fiction and creative nonfiction. We'll learn how to create tension via the back-and-forth “dialogue” a big and little voice can evoke while paying attention to the ways the big voice can be utilized to make a character’s motivations more believable. Finally, the big voice can serve as a loophole to get around the limitations of first-person or close-third points-of-view for revealing big picture information the reader needs to know.

Lament can be elegy or protest, memoir or lyric outpouring. This craft workshop will explore this fertile and necessary genre, offering examples and prompts to encourage writers to articulate their own lament whether it be personal, political, environmental, or spiritual.

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.

Hear your favorite visiting author perform their recent works. Shop at the Lit Fest pop-up bookstore operated by The Bookies and get your book signed afterward.