Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Attracts Authors and Poets to 91st Session
RIPTON, Vt. — The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the oldest writers’ conference in the country, will hold its 91st session when it begins Wednesday, August 10, and ends Saturday, August 20. Held every summer since 1926 on Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, the conference remains one of America’s most respected literary institutions. Ten days of workshops, lectures, classes, and readings provide writers with rigorous practical and theoretical approaches to their craft. The mountain campus has attracted many renowned authors and poets such as Robert Frost, Carson McCullers, John Irving, Terry Tempest Williams, Ted Conover, and Julia Alvarez.
Conference lectures and readings are free and open to the public.
This summer the conference faculty will include such literary figures as Yiyun Li, author of four books–two short story collections and two novels. Her most recent work is the novel Kinder than Solitude. Li’s fiction has been translated into more than 20 languages. A 2010 MacArthur Fellow, Li teaches writing at the University of California at Davis.
Faculty member and fiction writer Laila Lalami is the author of the novels Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, Secret Son, and The Moor’s Account. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Guardian, and the New York Times. The recipient of a British Council Fellowship and a Fulbright Fellowship, she is currently a professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.
A number of distinguished writers will also attend the conference as fellows, including Ted Genoways and T. Geronimo Johnson. Fellowships are awarded to applicants who have published their first or second book in English within the last four years in the genre in which they are applying—poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.
Genoways, the Amanda Davis Returning Fellow in Nonfiction, is the author of The Chain: Farm, Factory, and the Fate of Our Food (2014), This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Farm (forthcoming, 2017); and Tequila Wars: The Bloody Struggle for the Spirit of Mexico (forthcoming, 2018). The winner of a National Press Club Award and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice, Genoways is a contributing writer at Mother Jones and The New Republic.
Johnson, the Shane Stevens Fellow in the Novel, is the author of two novels, Hold It ‘Til It Hurts (2012), a Wall Street Journal Book Club pick, and Welcome to Braggsville (2015), named one of the top 10 books of 2015 by Time magazine. He has taught writing and held fellowships at Arizona State University, University of Iowa, UC Berkeley, Western Michigan University, Stanford, and elsewhere. Johnson is a 2016 National Book Award judge.
“The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference is a stimulating community of diverse voices in which writers test their own assumptions regarding literature and seek advice about their progress,” said Michael Collier, director of the conference. “The conference’s beautiful setting amid the Green Mountains provides an ideal environment for discussing manuscripts, sharing insights, getting to know agents and editors, and becoming acquainted with the next generation of significant writers.”
This year, more than 280 writers, students, faculty, literary agents, and editors will gather to participate in the 91st session of the conference. The general public is invited to attend a daily schedule of free readings and lectures that take place in the Little Theatre, located on the Bread Loaf campus on Route 125.
The 2016 series of public events will begin on Wednesday, August 10, at 8:15 p.m., with a welcome by Collier. He is the author of six books of poems, including The Ledge, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and, most recently, An Individual History. After Collier’s opening remarks, Bread Loaf faculty members Jane Hirshfield and Yiyun Li will give readings. The public events will wrap up with readings by Collier and Lynn Freed on Friday, August 19, at 8:15 p.m.
For a complete schedule of lectures and readings, see the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Web page. Events are subject to change. Call to confirm dates and times at 802-443-5286, through August 9; 802-443-2700, after August 10.
The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences include the Bread Loaf Orion Environmental Writers’ Conference, designed for those who want to bring more depth of knowledge to their writing about the environment, and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, which highlights the important role that literary translators of poetry and prose play in the United States and beyond.