Lit Fest 2025

This panel of writers and editors will share their screening process for determining what manuscripts make it into publication or the final rounds of a contest. We’ll share some suggestions for what to do (and what not to do) to make your work stand out and get the green light. Panelists include Jenny Shank, who served as a screener judge for this year’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Michelle Dotter, the publisher of Dzanc Press, and authors Kristin Koval and Steven Dunn.

This panel of writers and editors will share their screening process for determining what manuscripts make it into publication or the final rounds of a contest. We’ll share some suggestions for what to do (and what not to do) to make your work stand out and get the green light. Panelists include Jenny Shank, who served as a screener judge for this year’s Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, Michelle Dotter, the publisher of Dzanc Press, and authors Kristin Koval and Steven Dunn.

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.

This workshop will focus on studying several literary journals and the writings they publish in order to plan better where to submit our work. We'll read several genres recently published in journals such as The Adroit, The Sun, Guernica, and others to get down to business—discovering prompts from what we find for workshop exercises. We’ll also discuss cover letters, author bios, and aesthetics within journals to avoid pitfalls when submitting.