Fall Literary Festival CFP
Lit Youngstown seeks proposals for Our Shared Story, 5th annual Fall Literary Festival, October 7-9 in Northeast Ohio, featuring Ross Gay, Jan Beatty, Matt Forrest Esenwine, Bonnie Proudfoot & Mike Geither. Special guest David Hassler.
General Information
This year’s conference will be centered around the theme “Our Shared Story,” a conversation about writing, publishing, community outreach, and literary inclusion. The conference aims to sustain and enhance community by allowing its members to share a stake in its narrative: its story—past, present, and future.
Sessions will be 60 minutes. Proposals may include panel and roundtable discussions, creative readings, or workshops. Group and individual proposal submissions are welcome. Individual presenters and creative readings may be grouped into panels by conference organizers.
Individuals are limited to two proposal submissions, please. Accepted presenters will be required to register for the conference at the presenter rate of $45 (graduate students and contingent faculty $20; undergraduate students free; hardship scholarships available). The proposal deadline is February 28.
Please submit your proposal here.
Presentation Topics
We seek proposals from a diverse cross section of voices and experiences and encourage submissions from African American and Black, Latinx and Chicanx, Asian American, Appalachian, religious minority, disabled, blind and deaf, LGBTQ and non-binary, immigrant, native, rural, older, parent, and resource-poor writers. All genres are welcome and encouraged.
Possible topics for proposals include:
Our Shared Story: Community voices
Engaging and sustaining a writing life
International, transnational, or diasporic literature
Responsibly engaging diverse voices and perspectives
Writers with disabilities
Writing about identity and marginalized experiences
Writing within the deaf community
Writing Collectively: Pedagogy, workshops, and outreach
Building writing communities
Collaboration and mentoring
Creative writing outreach, oral history, narrative medicine
Creative writing pedagogy
Literary arts service learning
MFA programs
Residencies, conferences and other opportunities
Strategies for teaching and researching writing
Publication and Marketing:
Children’s and YA writing and publishing
Lack of representation in publishing
Navigating the publishing industry as marginalized communities
Marketing and legal issues for writers
Older writers and publishing
Modalities—The page and beyond:
Blackout poetry
Comics & graphic novels
Digital presentation, poetry in code
Film & new media
Hybrid & short forms, flash
Literary topics in all genres
Oral performance of poetry, spoken word, hiphop
Playwriting
Screenwriting
Speculative fiction
Storytelling
Writing for mass media: journalism, blogging, podcasts, radio, etc
Craft, Criticism, and Translation:
Codeswitching and Dialect
Developing best practices in your craft
Literary criticism
Translating and accessing works in translation