No matter where you live, if you're a nonfiction writer, Virtual Lit Fest 2020 has something for you! 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 rounding out your writing? Check out the poet's and fiction writer's guides, and keep an eye out for the upcoming dramatic writer's guide.
Two-Weekend Intensives
- Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Muddled Pages: Revising and Reviving Prose You Thought Was Dead with BK Loren (June 6-7, June 13-14)
- Form and Function: Organizing Through Objects with Richard Froude (June 6-7, 13-14)
- Modulation: Your Voice and the Secrets of How to Use It with William Haywood Henderson (June 6-7, June 13-14)
One-Weekend Intensives
- Writing a Memoir That Reads Like a Novel with Karen Auvinen (June 13-14)
- Writing Witness with Elizabeth Robinson (June 13-14)
- Hybrid Composition with Diana Khoi Nguyen (June 20-21)
Craft Seminars
To view all of our craft seminars, click here.
Monday, June 1
- Emotional Transitions with Paula Younger
- Genre Blur: Writing Dreams in Poems, Flash, and Hybrid Forms with Juan J. Morales
Tuesday, June 2
- Getting Published: Stories, Essays, Articles, and Books* with Jenny Shank
- Creating Art in Dark Times with R. Alan Brooks
- How to Craft a Compelling Memoir with Rachel Weaver
Wednedsay, June 3
- Radical Empathy: Ethical Inhabitation with Diana Khoi Nguyen
- Dismantling the Writer’s Block with Carolina Ebeid
- Situation and the Story with Paula Younger
- Sequencing with William Haywood Henderson
Thursday, June 4
- It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: On Writing Setting with Rachel Weaver
- Outlining the Nontraditional Novel or Memoir with Courtney E. Morgan
Friday, June 5
- Writing Through the Photograph with Carolina Ebeid
- Prompt Party with Joy Roulier Sawyer
Monday, June 8
- Tension and Conflict: Keep Your Readers on the Edge of Their Seats with Rachel Weaver
- The Sentence: Long, Short, Incomplete, Elegant, Crude, and Also Run-On* with Robin Black
- The Universal in the Particular* with Thomas Chatterton Williams
Tuesday, June 9
- Building a Personal Archive* with Sarah M. Broom
Wednesday, June 10
- Truth in Memoir with Ellen Blum Barish
- In Praise of Tangents* with Peter Orner
- Critical Chops with John Cotter
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
- The Mystery of Voice* with Jane Hirshfield
- Push Upstairs: Recovering Our Stories with Richard Froude
- On Voice: Or, How to Wield Your Words* with Lacy M. Johnson
Monday, June 15
- Revising Efficiently: Some Techniques to Save Time with Rachel Weaver
- Essay as Song: What Essayists Can Learn from the Songwriters with Ellen Blum Barish
Tuesday, June 16
- Channel Your Inner Slam Poet with Tanaya Winder
- Writing Yourself In with Evelyn Hampton
- Personal Essays with a Twist with Jenny Shank
- Writing in Response to, or Against: the "Widerruf" with Diana Khoi Nguyen
Wednesday, June 17
- 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
- Preach: How the Bible Taught Me to Write* with Emily Rapp Black
Thursday, June 18
- Anxiety as Influence with Joanna Luloff
- Creating Emotion, Avoiding Melodrama with Paula Younger
- Queer Forms with Serena Chopra
Friday, June 19
- The Limit’s the Sky: Pursuing Formal Constraints in Prose with Andrea Bobotis
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
- Music and Meaning with Dan Beachy-Quick
Monday, June 22
- Order out of Chaos: How to Structure Your Nonfiction with Joel Warner
Tuesday, June 23
- Sharpen Your Sentences with John Cotter
- One True Sentence: Writing Sentences that Stick with Ellen Blum Barish
Wednesday, June 24
- Close, Close (Close) Third Person with Erika Krouse
- Your White Whale: Symbolism and the Objective Correlative with Erika Krouse
- But Who Will Read It? Finding Your Audience with Cynthia Swanson
Thursday, June 25
- Rituals and Routines for a Robust Writing Practice with Courtney E. Morgan
- This is the End, My Only Friend: Two Types of Endings in Fiction and Nonfiction with Alexander Lumans
- “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
- Sinner and Saints: Creative Use of Sacred Texts in Writing with Nadia Bolz-Weber
- Personal Essay Generator with Emily Flouton
- Punctuate Your Love with John Cotter
Monday, June 29
- Me, Myself, and I: Constructing a Memoir’s Fictional Hero with Vicki Lindner
Tuesday, June 30
- Writing the Body with Sarah Elizabeth Schantz
- Write in Your Sleep: A Writer's Guide to Lucid Dreaming with Emily Flouton
- Writing a Great Nonfiction Book Proposal with Buzzy Jackson
Wednesday, July 1
- A New Set of Instructions for Living with Kathryn Trueblood
- Hybrid Genres—Experimenting with Life and Form with Brandi Homan
Thursday, July 2
- Endings: Cracking the Code with Amanda Rea
- Living Memory: Techniques for Making the Dim Past a Vivid Present with Karen Auvinen
Friday, July 3
- Humor Writing for People Who Are or Aren’t Funny (Yet) with Elissa Bassist
- 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
- 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
