Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference to Offer Free Readings and Lectures Daily
The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the oldest writers’ conference in the country, continues to celebrate its 100th anniversary when it begins Wednesday, August 12, and concludes Saturday, August 22. Held every summer since 1926 on Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, the conference remains one of the nation’s most respected literary institutions.
Over 10 days, 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, Toni Morrison, and Julia Alvarez. The yearlong centennial celebration, which began last summer, culminates with special events during the 2026 conference.
Conference lectures and readings take place daily and are free and open to the public. Click here for a complete list of 2026 lectures and readings.
Writer Toni Jensen is among the literary figures who will serve on the conference faculty. Jensen is the author of Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, a Dayton Peace Prize finalist and a New York Times Editors’ Choice book. Jensen’s essays have appeared in magazines such as Orion, Catapult, and Ecotone. She is also the author of the story collection From the Hilltop. Jensen has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas. She is Métis. Jensen will offer a reading with Tiphanie Yanique on Friday, August 14 at 8 p.m.
Other faculty include Jericho Brown, Marie-Helene Bertino, and Alexander Chee. Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, the New Yorker, New Republic, Paris Review, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. Brown’s first book, Please (2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal. He is also the editor of the anthology How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill (2023), and The Selected Shepherd (2024), a retrospective on the work of poet Reginald Shepherd. Brown is also the author of The Tradition (2019), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University. Bertino is the author of the novels Beautyland, Parakeet, and 2 a.m. at the Cat’s Pajamas, and the short story collections Safe as Houses and Exit Zero. Beautyland was an American Book Award winner, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist, a New York Times Notable 100 and a Time Magazine Top 10 Book of 2024. A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction, she has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, and The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellowship in Cork, Ireland. She has taught for NYU, The New School, and Institute for American Indian Arts, and is currently the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University. Chee is the author of the novels Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night, and the essay collection How To Write An Autobiographical Novel. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2021 United Artists Fellow, he is previously a recipient of the Whiting Award and a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in Prose, as well as residencies from MacDowell, Civitella Ranieri and the VCCA. A contributing editor for the New Republic and an editor at large for VQR, his stories and essays have appeared recently in T Magazine, the Sewanee Review, and Harper’s, among others. He was the guest editor for Best American Essays 2022. He is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College, and lives in Vermont, where he is at work on a new novel.
Brown will offer a reading with Lauren Francis-Sharma on Thursday, August 20 at 8 p.m. Bertino will offer a reading with Chigozie Obioma on Saturday, August 15 at 8 p.m. and a lecture titled “The Everyday Divine” on Friday, August 21 at 9 a.m. Chee will offer a reading with Rick Barot on Sunday, August 16 at 8 p.m. and a lecture titled “What is a Novel For?” on Monday, August 17 at 10 a.m.
“What makes Bread Loaf exciting is its ability to serve as a source of encouragement to writers in their more formative years,” said Jennifer Grotz, director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in August and also the Environmental Writers’ Conference and the Translators’ Conference that take place concurrently in June. “The talent of the experienced writers on our faculty, the stunning setting, and the conference’s history combine to inspire budding poets and authors as they find their voices and work on their craft of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.”
This year, more than 260 writers, students, faculty, literary agents, and editors will gather to participate. The general public is invited to attend a daily schedule of free readings and lectures that take place in the Little Theater, located on the Bread Loaf campus on Route 125.
The 2026 series of public events will begin on Wednesday, August 12, at 8 p.m., with a welcome by Jennifer Grotz, who is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Still Falling, as well as Window Left Open, The Needle, and Cusp. Also a translator, she’s published two books of translations from the French: Psalms of All My Days by Patrice de La Tour du Pin, and Rochester Knockings, by Tunisian-born novelist Hubert Haddad. Her co-translations with Piotr Sommer from the Polish of Jerzy Ficowski’s Everything I Don’t Know received the PEN America Best Translated Book of Poetry Award in 2022. Alongside Lauren Francis-Sharma, she is co-editor of Welcome to the Mountain: A Portable Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.After Grotz’s opening remarks, Special Guest Julia Alvarez will read from her work. Alvarez is the author of eight novels, three books of nonfiction, five collections of poetry, and twelve books for children and young adults. She has taught in schools and communities across America and, until her retirement in 2016, was a writer in residence at Middlebury College. Her novel In the Time of the Butterflies, with over one million copies in print, was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling. In 2024, she was the subject of an American Masters documentary, “Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined,” on PBS. Alvarez is one of the founders of Border of Lights, a movement to promote peace and collaboration between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Her most recent book is Visitations: Poems, published by Knopf in 2026. The Center for Fiction recently named Alvarez the winner of its Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction Award to be presented in New York City in December.Alvarez lives in Vermont. Later in the conference, Grotz will offer a reading with Mary Helen Callier and Jon Hickey on Friday, August 21 at 4:15 p.m.
Visit the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference website for a complete schedule of lectures and readings. Events are subject to change. Call to confirm dates and times at 802-443-5286 through August 11; 802-443-2700 after August 12.
The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences include the Bread Loaf 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.