The in-person, 9th annual Fall Literary Festival October 16-18, 2025, will be centered around reading, writing, publishing, teaching and community outreach. While we welcome proposals on a variety of topics, this year's conference aims to sustain discussion on the environmental writing that shapes our experience and identity, and represents our rootedness in earth.
Important Dates:
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February 1-28 proposal submissions open
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mid-March proposal selections complete
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April 1 registration opens for attendees $65, presenters $45
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April 1 registration opens for bookfair table representatives
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April 30 registration deadline for presenters
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August 1 (or when sold out) registration closes for bookfair
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September 15 (or when sold out) general registration closes
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October 16 Gathering-In: Program walk-through, open mic
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October 17 All day concurrent sessions, evening reading
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October 18 All day concurrent sessions, evening reading
Proposals will be accepted here February 1-28, 2025 for:
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individual presentations (including creative readings)
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prearranged panels with multiple speakers
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generative writing workshops
PROPOSALS
Proposals accepted February 1-28, 2025
Possible topics for proposals include:
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Community Voices Engaging/sustaining a writing life: International, transnational, regional or diasporic literature; Responsibly engaging diverse voices; Writers and readers with disabilities; Writing identity and marginalized experiences
Writing Collectively: Pedagogy, Workshops, and Outreach; Building writing communities; Collaboration and mentoring; Creative writing outreach, oral history, narrative medicine; Creative writing pedagogy in K-12 and higher education; Literary arts service learning; MFA programs; Residencies and conferences; Strategies for teaching and researching
Publication and Marketing: The role of editors or agents in publishing; Children’s and YA writing and publishing; Navigating the publishing industry as marginalized communities; Marketing and legal issues for writers
Modalities—The page and beyond: Erasure; Comics and graphic novels; Digital presentation, poetry in code; Film and new media; Hybrid & short forms; Oral performance of poetry; Playwriting; Screenwriting; Storytelling; Writing for mass media: journalism, blogging, podcasts, radio; Literary criticism; Literary histories; Translating and accessing works in translation; Code switching and dialect.
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On Exit Surveys, 2024 Attendees Requested More Content on These Topics
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Publishing: Roundtable on the pros and cons of traditional vs. self publishing; Inside knowledge about publishing as an industry; Small press publishing; Small press business & advocacy
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Writing: Drama; Children's books; Modes of poetry: elegy, ode, ars poetica, memoir; Performance poetry; Collage/visual poetry; Poetic theories; Translation; Writing in received forms; Nonfiction writing; Worldbuilding; Ekphrastic writing, writing about art; Writing about chronic pain/invisible disabilities; Feedback session; Revision; Novel writing workshops; Book reviews; Craft of Black aesthetics; Feminist writing; Building manuscripts; Romance/unrequired love, Youngstown based writing; How to get into your reader's head; Cross-genres; Journalistic writing
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Literary Life: How to develop a writing life; How to make a living on writing; LGBTQ, POC, Disability panels; How to be more involved in the writing and editing scene
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Conference organizers will combine individuals and groups when scheduling sessions. 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 sponsorships available).
All genres are welcome and encouraged. We seek proposals from a diverse cross section of voices and encourage submissions from African American and Black, Latinx and Chicanx, Asian American, Appalachian, Native, religious minority, disabled, LGBTQ and non-binary, immigrant, rural, older, parent, and resource-poor presenters.
FEATURED PRESENTERS
Kortney Morrow is a poet and writer creating from her studio in Cleveland. Her work has received support from 68to05, The Academy of American Poets, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, and Transition Magazine. Her debut poetry collection, Run It Back, was the winner of the 2024 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize, judged by Carmen Giménez. Kortney is represented by McKinnon Literary.
Todd Davis is the author of eight full-length collections of poetry—Ditch Memory: New & Selected Poems; Coffin Honey; Native Species; Winterkill; In the Kingdom of the Ditch; The Least of These; Some Heaven; and Ripe—as well as of a limited-edition chapbook, Household of Water, Moon, and Snow. He edited the nonfiction collection, Fast Break to Line Break: Poets on the Art of Basketball, and co-edited the anthologies A Literary Field Guide to Northern Appalachia and Making Poems: Forty Poems with Commentary by the Poets. His writing has won the Midwest Book Award, the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Editors Prize, the Bloomsburg University Book Prize, and the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Silver and Bronze Awards. He is an emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute and professor of environmental studies at Pennsylvania State University.
Lauren Camp serves as New Mexico Poet Laureate. She is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently In Old Sky (Grand Canyon Conservancy, 2024), which grew out of her experience as Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Camp has received fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and Black Earth Institute, as well as the Dorset Prize, a Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award, Big Other Book Award and Adrienne Rich Award. Her poems have been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, French, and Arabic.
David Huebert has won the CBC Short Story Prize, appeared several times in Best Canadian Stories, and was a finalist for the 2020 Journey Prize. His two short story collections, Peninsula Sinking and Chemical Valley, have won the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize and the Dartmouth Book Award for fiction. His debut novel, Oil People, was published in August 2024 and has been called “lyrical,” “elegant,” and “wildly hallucinatory.” David teaches in the fiction MFA program at the University of King’s College in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), where he lives with his partner and two children.
Sean Prentiss is the author of a memoir, Finding Abbey: the Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave, which won the National Outdoor Book Award. He is the author of two memoirs-in-poems, including Crosscut: Poems, and Majella: Poems from a Mountain Home. He is the co-author of two textbooks, Environmental and Nature Writing and Advanced Creative Nonfiction, and is the co-editor of The Science of Story: The Brain Behind Creative Nonfiction. He is a professor at Norwich University. He and his family live on a small lake in northern Vermont.
CONFERENCE FAQ
Q: How many people attend the Fall Literary Festival?
A: We are typically at our capacity of 300, coming in from Youngstown and coast to coast. Nearly half of attendees are presenters, leading to a rich, welcoming and engaging environment.
Q: Why are presenters asked to pay a registration fee?
A: We hope that presenters will also see themselves as attendees at a conference that has value for their own work. We want presenters to know we are exceedingly grateful for their intellectual, creative and scholarly contributions, and that their reduced registration fee makes it financially possible for the conference to happen in Youngstown, a resource poor community.
Q: Who is eligible for a bookfair table?
A: Representatives of literary businesses (bookstores, presses, journals, editing/marketing services), programs (academic, community-based) and organizations (clubs, nonprofits) are welcome to join 30 other tables at the bookfair. This year's bookfair will again take place at the beautiful McDonough Museum of Art. Lit Youngstown is pleased to sell books by presenters, but bookfair tables do not include individual authors.
Q: Is there a cost associated with having a table?
A: There is no table fee, but all table staffers are required to register at the presenter rate of $45.
Q: Does Lit Youngstown provide tables?
A: Yes, we provide tables (but not tablecloths).