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I regret to inform you that Carol Houck Smith, editor-at-large for W.W. Norton, passed away over the Thanksgiving weekend. For more than two decades, Carol visited the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and met with participants to talk about their projects and to offer advice and encouragement. Everyone associated with the Writers’ Conference will miss her tremendously. Fortunately, through the Carol Houck Smith fiction and poetry scholarships, we will be able to celebrate her legacy as one of the great champions of American literature and as an unflagging supporter of Bread Loaf. Please click here to read an account of Carol’s life and work.
Michael Collier
Conference Director |
BREAD LOAF 2009 SESSION
Conference Dates: Wednesday, August 12, through Sunday, August 23.
Please note that all application deadlines for the 2009 session have now passed. Notification letters will go out in late May.
Click here for a PDF version of the 2009 Conference brochure.
The same information is available on the Conference web pages.
"Telling American Stories"
Click this link to watch a 27-minute video about the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. (Video created by Stephen Fisher Productions)
Created in 2000 to celebrate the Conference's 75th anniversary, the video highlights the history of the Conference and includes interviews with Director Michael Collier, Bread Loaf Historian David Haward Bain, and the following Bread Loaf faculty and guests: Julia Alvarez, Patricia Hampl, Edward Hirsch, Garrett Hongo, Randall Kenan, Yusef Komunyakaa, Barry Lopez, Paul Mariani, Antonya Nelson, Jay Parini, and Ellen Bryant Voigt.
A note from the director:
The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference is one of America's most valuable literary institutions. For the past 84 years, the workshops, lectures, and classes, held in the shadow of the Green Mountains, have introduced generations of participants to rigorous practical and theoretical approaches to the craft of writing, and given America itself proven models of literary instruction. Bread Loaf is not a retreat—not a place to work in solitude. Instead it provides a stimulating community of diverse voices in which we test our own assumptions regarding literature and seek advice about our progress as writers. In August we will again welcome more than two hundred talented writers to the historic Bread Loaf Inn, along with our distinguished faculty, and many agents and editors from major publishing houses and literary firms.
Come prepared to join fully in the busy schedule and to enjoy the beauty of the wilderness setting. No one who has done so has failed to be inspired, encouraged, or changed by Bread Loaf.
Michael Collier
Director