Stevens and Fiction | American Literature Association 2026 | Chicago, IL | May 2026

Wallace Stevens famously claimed that the poet “creates the world to which we turn incessantly and without knowing it” and “gives to life the supreme fictions without which we are unable to conceive of it” (CPP 662). Where exactly, we might ask in response, amidst the well-known interplay of “imagination” and “reality” in his verse and thought, does fiction dwell? From his philosophical conjectures about the “fiction” of religious belief to his private readings of nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels, “fictive things” (CPP 47) (“A High-Toned Old Christian Woman”) may have meant many different things to Stevens. The Wallace Stevens Society invites abstracts for 15-minute presentations on any topic relating to Stevens and Fiction. Welcome topics include but are not limited to:

• Stevens and literary genres
• Stevens and narratology
• Philosophical and theoretical perspectives on fiction/fictionality
• Stevens and the novel
• Stevens and belief
• Fiction read by Stevens
• Critical narratives (“fictions”) about Stevens

Please send a title, an abstract of approximately 250 words, and a short biographical note to Nora Pehrson at npehrso1@jh.edu and Zachary Tavlin at ztavlin@saic.edu by January 15, 2026.