Virtual formats are shaking up the literary conference word. Yes, they prevent face to face connections but they open events to wider audiences and allow organizers to bring in a wider range of authors and speakers. Here are some new highlights:
March 25-28: This
week’s Dallas Literary Festival headlines a spring of literary events revamped by the COVID-19 pandemic. The
online festival will include panel discussions, author readings and one-on-one
conversations focusing on the theme of “turbulence.” The combination of a
pandemic and systemic racism in America resulted in “a perfect storm,” says
festival director, Dallas author Sanderia Faye Smith (The Mourner’s Bench),
“Now we’re trying to figure out how we’re going to deal with them.”
Many of the Dallas festival’s authors have written
about racism or incarceration, including headliner Alice Marie Johnson, an
advocate for criminal justice reform whose memoir, After Life, deals
with her own prison experience. She speaks starting at 6 p.m. CT this Friday
(March 25) in conversation with Mitchell S. Jackson (Survival Math: Notes on
an All-American Family).
Topics at the more than 30 additional festival
presentations range from building a more inclusive literary canon to
translating surrealist fiction and crafting mysteries. The more than a hundred
speakers include U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, New York Times columnist
Charles M. Blow, and Pulitzer Prize recipients Tyehimba Jess and Benjamin
Moser. Winners of a short fiction contest for high school students will also
read their works.
Admission is free. See the site for complete schedules.
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| Image by ktphotography from Pixabay |
March 28: One
of the Dallas Literary Festival’s free events is also part of the Dallas Museum
of Art’s Arts and Letters Live.
Novelists Hala Alyan (The Arsonists’ City) and Patricia Lockwood (No One
Is Talking About This) speak at 2 p.m. CT in conversation with Mira Jacob.
Arts and Letters Live continues through October 4. See the site for details and
ticket information.
***
April 1: Also
online and free – a free webinar/Q&A with writing lessons from author/agent
Donald Maass, editor Lorin Oberweger, and more. Topics include emotional
storytelling, outlining, scene structure, poetry techniques for prose, and
more! April 1, from 6:15 p.m. – 7:45 p.m. CT. See the Free-Expressions Seminars and Literary Services site for
registration and details. (Note: site lists the event using ET.)
***
June 11-13:
The Houston Writers Guild’s “Ready, Set, Pitch!” conference goes online,
with speakers June 11-13 (Friday-Sunday), an agents and editors panel Saturday,
and workshop with Dallas’ own Arianne “Tex” Thompson Sunday. Agents and editors
will be available for one-on-one 15-minute pitch sessions Saturday. They
include J. Bruce Fuller, acquisitions editor for Texas Review Press, seeking
literary fiction and poetry; Jacqui Lipton of Raven’s Quill Literary Agency,
seeking middle grade and young adult fiction and nonfiction; Dawn Dowdle of
Blue Ridge Literary Agency, seeking a wide range of mysteries including middle
grade, romance, true crime, cookbooks, and picture books; and JoAnna Jordan,
acquisitions editor for Inklings Publishing, seeking a wide range of fiction
for adults, young adults and middle grade readers.
Early-bird pricing (through June 11) is $30 (plus
$3.45 fee) for all events; $25 (plus $3.16 fee) for 7-day recorded access to
sessions (note: some speakers may choose not to be recorded); and $45 (plus
$4.37 fee) for lifetime access to sessions (again note: some speakers may
choose not to be recorded). Agent/editor pitches are sold separately, $25 each.
See the site for tickets and full list of events.
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