If you write fiction, or something resembling fiction, have we got a Lit Fest for you! Lit Fest 2020 is one entire month (plus a few days) of craft seminars, business panels, readings, and nighttime salons—all to get you inspired, trying new things, and taking that draft to the next level.
Does your writing more closely resemble something else? Stay tuned in the following weeks for Lit Fest guides for all the poets and nonfiction and dramatic writers out there.
Two-Weekend Intensives
- Modulation: Your Voice and How to Use It with William Haywood Henderson (June 6-7, 13-14)
- Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Muddled Pages: Revising and Reviving Prose You Thought Was Dead with BK Loren (June 6-7, 13-14)
- Form and Function: Organizing Through Objects with Richard Froude (June 6-7, 13-14)
One-Weekend Intensives
- Story Structure with Alexandre Philippe (June 6-7)
- Use Your Illusion: How to Conjure Words and Worlds in Speculative Fiction with Alexander Lumans (June 27-28)
Suggested Craft Seminars
To view all of our craft seminars, click here.
Monday, June 1
- Emotional Transitions with Paula Younger
- This Is the End: Writing the Apocalypse with Daniel Levine
- Genre Blur: Writing Dreams in Poems, Flash, and Hybrid Forms with Juan Morales
- The God Module, or Point of View as the Precondition for Any Story Whatsoever with Andrew Altschul
Tuesday, June 2
- Secrets of Suspense with John Cotter
- Getting Published: Stories, Essays, Articles, and Books with Jenny Shank
- Creating Art in Dark Times with R. Alan Brooks
Wednesday, June 3
- You, You, and You: Second-Person Point of View in Narrative with Jennifer Wortman
- Faith and Philosophy: The Deep Beliefs of Your Characters with Nick Arvin
- Radical Empathy: Ethical Inhabitation with Diana Khoi Nguyen
- Situation and the Story with Paula Younger
- Dismantling the Writer’s Block with Carolina Ebeid
Thursday, June 4
- It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: On Writing Setting with Rachel Weaver
- Milieu: The World of Your Story with Dino Enrique Piacentini
- Outlining the Nontraditional Novel or Memoir with Courtney E. Morgan
Friday, June 5
- Two-Faced: The Art of Multiple Perspectives with Jenny Shank
- Writing Through the Photograph with Carolina Ebeid
- Prompt Party with Joy Roulier Sawyer
- When Desire Dates Doubt: The Crush as Literary Engine* with Steve Almond
Saturday, June 6
- Find Your Character and You’ve Found Your Plot* with Steve Almond
Sunday, June 7
- The Beauty and Peril of Friendship* with Steve Almond
Monday, June 8
- The Sentence: Long, Short, Incomplete, Elegant, Crude, and Also Run-On* with Robin Black
- Tension and Conflict: Keep Your Readers on the Edge of Their Seats with Rachel Weaver
- Let’s Get Intimate: Working with Narrative Distance with Tiffany Quay Tyson
Tuesday, June 9
- Getting Under the Skin: Techniques for Closing Narrative Distance with Jenny Shank
- Place, Setting, and World Building with Courtney E. Morgan
- Building a Personal Archive* with Sarah M. Broom
Wednesday, June 10
- In Praise of Tangents* with Peter Orner
Thursday, June 11
- 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
- Literary Lineages and Writerly Identity with Jessica Comola
- Writing Cinematically with William Haywood Henderson
Friday, June 12
- Push Upstairs: Recovering Our Stories with Richard Froude
- Writing Your Anxiety with Wendy J. Fox
- How to Write Gorgeous Prose (and Put It to Work) with Andrea Bobotis
Sunday, June 14
- Building a Strong Foundation for a Novel or Memoir with Rachel Weaver
Monday, June 15
- Throw in the Dead Cat* with Akhil Sharma
- Revising Efficiently: Some Techniques to Save Time with Rachel Weaver
- Secrets from the Slush Pile: Writing Next-Level Fiction with Jennifer Wortman
- Some Recent Queer Aesthetics* with Garth Greenwell
- The Scale of Experience: Poetry and Flash Fiction* with Justin Torres
Tuesday, June 16
- Tightening Saggy Middles with Paula Younger
- Writing Yourself In with Evelyn Hampton
Wednesday, June 17
- Extracting Your Internal Dialogue with Wendy J. Fox
- The Actor's Guide to Dialogue with Susan Knudten
- The Process and the Writer* with Sheila Heti
- Preach: How the Bible Taught Me to Write* with Emily Rapp Black
Thursday, June 18
- Creating Emotion, Avoiding Melodrama with Paula Younger
- The Classics of Story Structure…and the Ever-Popular B-Sides with Jenny Shank
- Anxiety as Influence with Joanna Luloff
- Dear So-and-So: Building Intimacy in the Epistolary Text with Addie Tsai
Friday, June 19
- The Limit’s the Sky: Pursuing Formal Constraints in Prose with Andrea Bobotis
- It Is ‘I’! The Compelling First-Person Narrator with Tiffany Quay Tyson
Saturday, June 20
- Micro-Editing: Working with Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, and Adverbs with Erika Krouse
- How to Render Trauma Without Traumatizing Your Reader/Audience with Tanaya Winder
- Your First Pages: Expositions and Hooks with Erika Krouse
- Writer, Know Thyself: Your Leap from Doubt to Trust with Catherine Wallace Hope
Sunday, June 21
- Le Domaine Perdu: Writing Your Lost World with Amanda Rea
- The Ticking Clock: Using Techniques from Thrillers to Increase the Tension in Your Writing with David Heska Wanbli Weiden
Monday, June 22
- Researching and Writing Not-So-Historical Fiction with Cynthia Swanson
- Two F-Words: Feminism and Fiction with Brandi Homan
Tuesday, June 23
- Sharpen Your Sentences with John Cotter
- One True Sentence: Writing Sentences that Stick with Ellen Blum Barish
- Worldbuilding Made Easy with Evelyn Hampton
- 3:00 AM Epiphanies in the Afternoon with Brian Kiteley
Wednesday, June 24
- But Who Will Read It? Finding Your Audience with Cynthia Swanson
- Close, Close (Close) Third Person with Erika Krouse
- Your White Whale: Symbolism and the Objective Correlative with Erika Krouse
Thursday, June 25
- This is the End, My Only Friend: Two Types of Endings in Fiction and Nonfiction with Alexander Lumans
- Story Hot Seat with Mario Acevedo
- The Thinking Image with Dan Beachy-Quick
- Rituals and Routines for a Robust Writing Practice with Courtney E. Morgan
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
Sunday, June 28
- Secrets: Strategies for Story with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
- Draft a Short Story in Two Hours with Amanda Rea
Monday, June 29
- Live! Live! (An Exploration of Character Development) with Daniel Levine
- These Eyes Are Pencils: Writing from Images with Alexander Lumans
- Intro to Flash Fiction with Robert McBrearty
Tuesday, June 30
- Getting Unstuck through the Power of Motive with Mario Acevedo
- The Reliable Unreliable Narrator with Andrea Bobotis
- Writing the Body with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
- Write in Your Sleep: A Writer's Guide to Lucid Dreaming with Emily Flouton
Wednesday, July 1
- Writing and Promoting the “Book Club Book” with Cynthia Swanson
Thursday, July 2
- Elements of Character with Nick Arvin
- Endings: Cracking the Code with Amanda Rea
Friday, July 3
- Time Travel: Writing Flashback and Backstory with Erika Krouse
- Outlining the Contingent Plot with Erika Krouse
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
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
