Virtual Lit Fest 2020 has something for everyone, including dramatic writers and those whose writing is hard to define! We've got five full weeks of craft seminars, evening salons, business panels, and readings to get you and your manuscript to the next level.
Interested in something a bit more straightforward? Check out the poet's, fiction writer's, and nonfiction writer's guides.
Two-Weekend Intensives
- Form and Function: Organizing Through Objects with Richard Froude
One-Weekend Intensives
- Hybrid Composition with Diana Khoi Nguyen
Craft Seminars
To view all of our craft seminars, click here.
Monday, June 1
- Translation and Writing: A Conversation with Poupeh Missaghi
- Genre Blur: Writing Dreams in Poems, Flash, and Hybrid Forms with Juan J. Morales
Tuesday, June 2
- Creating Art in Dark Times with R. Alan Brooks
Wednesday, June 3
- Radical Empathy: Ethical Inhabitation with Diana Khoi Nguyen
- Dismantling the Writer’s Block with Carolina Ebeid
Thursday, June 4
- Outlining the Nontraditional Novel or Memoir with Courtney E. Morgan
- Oulipo Strategies: Making Poems with Unexpected Forms with Elizabeth Robinson
Friday, June 5
- Writing Through the Photograph with Carolina Ebeid
- Prompt Party with Joy Roulier Sawyer
- Scansion Blast with David J. Rothman
Monday, June 8
- How to Write a ‘How to’ Poem with Nicky Beer
- The Universal in the Particular* with Thomas Chatterton Williams
- Writing the City with Poupeh Missaghi
Tuesday, June 9
- Building a Personal Archive* with Sarah M. Broom
Wednesday, June 10
- In Praise of Tangents* with Peter Orner
- Mystic Speech: Psalms, Mantras, Litanies, Sutras with Elizabeth Robinson
- Truth in Memoir with Ellen Blum Barish
- Seven Deadly Sins of Screenwriting (and How to Make Them Work) with Jennifer Taylor-Whitehorn
Thursday, June 11
- Literary Lineages and Writerly Identity with Jessica Comola
- Writing Cinematically with William Haywood Henderson
- Comics Versus Prose Writing: What’s the Difference? with R. Alan Brooks
- The Secret of Energy: Ways to Get Your Writing to Leap, Sing, and Smash! with Karen Auvinen
Friday, June 12
- Writing Your Anxiety with Wendy J. Fox
- On Voice: Or, How to Wield Your Words* with Lacy M. Johnson
- Push Upstairs: Recovering Our Stories with Richard Froude
- The Mystery of Voice* with Jane Hirshfield
Sunday, June 14
- Drawing for Writers with Brian Kearney
Monday, June 15
- The Scale of Experience: Poetry and Flash Fiction* with Justin Torres
- Some Recent Queer Aesthetics* with Garth Greenwell
Tuesday, June 16
- On Sound: What Poets Can Learn from Music* with Hanif Abdurraqib
- Channel Your Inner Slam Poet with Tanaya Winder
- Writing Yourself In with Evelyn Hampton
- Writing in Response to, or Against: the "Widerruf" with Diana Khoi Nguyen
Wednesday, June 17
- Preach: How the Bible Taught Me to Write* with Emily Rapp Black
- The Process and the Writer* with Sheila Heti
- Extracting Your Internal Dialogue with Wendy J. Fox
- The Actor's Guide to Dialogue with Susan Knudten
Thursday, June 18
- Breath, Measure, and Line* with Ariana Reines
- Queer Forms with Serena Chopra
- Anxiety as Influence with Joanna Luloff
- Dear So-and-So: Building Intimacy in the Epistolary Text with Addie Tsai
Friday, June 19
- Poem as Collage with Andrea Rexilius
- The Limit’s the Sky: Pursuing Formal Constraints in Prose with Andrea Bobotis
Saturday, June 20
- How to Render Trauma Without Traumatizing Your Reader/Audience with Tanaya Winder
- Writer, Know Thyself: Your Leap from Doubt to Trust with Catherine Wallace Hope
Sunday, June 21
- Techniques of the Eternal Ballad with David J. Rothman
- Music and Meaning with Dan Beachy-Quick
Monday, June 22
- Two F-Words: Feminism and Fiction with Brandi Homan
- Writing the “I”: Transformation and Our (Many) Selves with Jessica Comola
Wednesday, June 24
- Funny Despite Itself: Humor and Poetry with Sommer Browning
Thursday, June 25
- “Your Wild and Precious Life”: Exploiting the Link Between Poetry and Memoir with Karen Auvinen
- The Thinking Image with Dan Beachy-Quick
Friday, June 26
- Bodies in Prose with Wendy J. Fox
- Chasing Inspiration: Creating a Joyful Writing Habit with Tiffany Quay Tyson
- Writing Gender Beyond the Stereotypes with Courtney E. Morgan
Saturday, June 27
- Punctuate Your Love with John Cotter
- Sinner and Saints: Creative Use of Sacred Texts in Writing with Nadia Bolz-Weber
- Personal Essay Generator with Emily Flouton
Monday, June 29
- Mapping Territory: Organizing Your Poetry Manuscript with Radha Marcum
- These Eyes Are Pencils: Writing from Images with Alexander Lumans
Tuesday, June 30
- Writing the Body with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
- Write in Your Sleep: A Writer's Guide to Lucid Dreaming with Emily Flouton
Wednesday, July 1
- Hybrid Genres—Experimenting with Life and Form with Brandi Homan
- A New Set of Instructions for Living with Kathryn Trueblood
Thursday, July 2
- Beating the $h*t out of Your Pilot Script: The Power of an Extensive Beat Sheet with Jennifer Taylor-Whitehorn
- Gaps, Tears, and Lacuna with Andrea Rexilius
BROWN-BAG BUSINESS PANELS
You can register for brown-bag business panels individually, or you can purchase a Business Panel Five Pack. A Full-Access Business Panel Pass will get you into all of them.
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: Trending Debuts—June 8
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: It’s a Whole New (Indie) World—June 9
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: Bright, Shiny Objects: Social Media for Writers—June 10
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: Publishing Underrepresented Voices—June 11
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: Strategic Submitting: Breaking into Publishing with Lit Mags—June 13
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: The Agent’s View—What You Need to Know—June 15
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: But I Thought I Would Have a Book by Now—June 16
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: The Gripe Session—June 17
- Brown-Bag Business Panel: Freelancing 101—June 18
SALONS
All salons at Virtual Lit Fest 2020 are free, with the exception of the screening of We the Animals.
- Salon: The Courage to Write—Putting It Out There When the World Might Throw it Back—June 5
- Salon + Reading: Skip the Comments—Engaging, or Not, with Readers—June 6
- We the Animals Screening + The Art of Adaptation with Francesca Sloane and Justin Torres—June 12
- Salon + Reading: Real Life, Real Art—June 13
- Salon: Staring at an Eclipse—Writing What Is Too Hard to Write—June 19
- Storytelling Night: Funny as a Heart Attack—June 20
- Salon: What’s Art For?—June 26
- Salon: The Serenity (and Anxiety) of Influence—Literary Friends and Mentors—June 27
- Salon: The Intellectual Creative/Creative Intellectual—June 28
VISITING AUTHORS READINGS
Visiting Authors Readings are free and open to the public.
- Happy Hour Reading 6/9: Visiting Authors featuring Robin Black and Thomas Chatterton Williams
- Happy Hour Reading 6/10: Visiting Authors featuring Sarah M. Broom and Jane Hirshfield
- Happy Hour Reading 6/11: Visiting Authors featuring Kenneth Lin and Peter Orner
- Happy Hour Reading 6/16: Visiting Authors featuring Emily Rapp Black and Akhil Sharma
- Happy Hour Reading 6/17: Visiting Authors featuring Hanif Abdurraqib and Ariana Reines
- Happy Hour Reading 6/18: Visiting Authors featuring Garth Greenwell and Sheila Heti
