At Half-Light Press, we're interested in hybrids, in margins, in liminal spaces, and smearing boundaries in order to create a broadened creative community. We aim to publish works that slip nooses and evade any easy definition.

The Half-Light Lit Festival and Conference aims to do the same. We'll be holding a three day event where we invite independent presses, creative writers, and scholars to come share a space, and share their unique perspectives in an attempt to foster connections between the three. This will include promotional tables for the independent presses and authors to sell their work, readings, craft talks and workshops, as well as scholarly panels exploring emerging trends in art, literature, and publishing. We have a special interest in authors, presses, and scholars working with speculative forms, slipstream, magical realism, fabulism and literary horror in any and all mediums.

The Half-Light Lit Fest and Conference will be held January 26th to January 29th. The Conference will begin with an opening reception dinner and a reading from our Key Note Speaker.

For academic panels and presentations, we are especially interested in discussing the following:

• The boundaries between literary fiction and speculative genres
• The boundaries between the academic community and the community of readers
• Redefinitions of literature
• Hybrid forms of art and literature
• Literature and identity 
• Changes in publishing in the modern era
• Reflections of culture in art and literature
• Marginalization in Identity manifesting in Marginalized Forms of Literature

For craft talks and talks from authors, we would love to hear from authors on:

• Developing speculative worlds
• Utilizing genre elements in literary fiction
• Creating Hybrid Works
• Playing with space on the page 
• Overcoming labels
• Selling experimental, hybrid, or speculative work
• Building community

For presses, we would welcome proposals of presentations on:

• Starting a literary magazine or press
• Branding
• Marketing experimental or speculative work
• Community engagement 
• Funding a small press
• Building relationships between presses

For workshops, we welcome authors to submit a proposal of a three day workshop plan on the genre and elements of craft they would like to teach. Workshop leaders will not be required to pay a registration fee, and workshops will be limited to 10 students per workshop. 

Thanks to additional funding we've received, we will be offering $500 travel grants to outstanding proposals to an individual from each sector: academics, creative writers, Literary Journals, Magazines or Presses, workshop instructors and Bookstores. Applicants must reside outside of the city of New Orleans. To apply for a travel grant, send a letter of interest to editors@pumpernickelhouse.com that includes the name of your presentation proposal, what role you are presenting as, as well as biography and a statement of why you think you and your proposal are ideal recipients of the grant, and an explanation of how the grant would benefit you. The participants who win the travel grants will also be awarded free admission to the conference.

To submit a proposal for an individual presentation, a panel, a workshop or a reading, see our submittable: https://pumpernicklehouse.submittable.com/submit/225949/call-for-papers-...

The deadline for proposals is June 11th, 2022.