Chautauqua Writers’ Festival

2020 Writers’ Festival Authors Convening

Wednesday, June 24, 2020 • 1 p.m. EST

Panelists: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Martha Collins, Porochista Khakpour, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Jess Row, and Lillian-Yvonne Bertram.

Panel’s Title: Here in the After: Writing Towards (More) Uncertain Futures

Join the 2020 (now the 2021) Chautauqua Writers’ Festival faculty for this webinar and Q&A about the role of writing about the pandemic, writing out the pandemic, and writing past the pandemic. How has our writing changed? Must it change, in light of recent events? In lieu of the festival, cancelled due to the pandemic, the festival director and faculty will convene to talk about what it means to write towards an even (more) uncertain future and what this has meant for their own writing practices, lives, and communities. Featuring Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Martha Collins, Porochista Khakpour, Marie Myung-Ok Lee, and Jess Row.

 
June 23–26, 2021
Personal Geographies

The 2021 Chautauqua Writers’ Festival takes place over the four days (Wednesday to Saturday) before Week One of Chautauqua Institution's summer season commences.

In addition to the Festival’s tradition of intensive workshops and one-on-one conferences with award-winning contemporary authors, attendees can also experience panel conversations, breakout sessions, and a keynote address. The 2021 theme is "Personal Geographies," and these various conversations will draw fruitful and urgent connections between the personal, the political, and the craft of writing. All of these features are included in the cost of Standard Registration and available as an option to any workshop participant.

Alternatively, Explorations Registration will make it possible for anyone to pay a reduced rate to attend everything other than workshops, fostering an even more vibrant, dynamic convening of writers from near and far. Explorations Registration is available through June 24 and at the door. Learn more below about registration, applications to join a panel or lead a breakout session, and our incredible faculty!

All registrants receive lodging discounts and special discount dining menus from Afterword and Brick Walk cafes on Bestor Plaza, as well as complimentary daily continental breakfast and airport shuttle service (reservation required; see "Schedule" tab). 

2021 Keynote

2021 Keynote

Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae
Explorations or Standard registration required to attend.

Shane McCrae’s most recent books are In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), which won the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award, The Gilded Auction Block (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019) and Sometimes I Never Suffered (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). He has received a Whiting Writer’s Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Lannan Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.