2021 Keynote
2021 Keynote
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.
2021 Faculty
2021 Faculty
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo (poetry)
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a poet, essayist, translator, and immigration advocate. He is the author of the collection Cenzontle (2018), which won the 2017 A. Poulin Jr. prize, and the chapbook Dulce (2018). His memoir, Children of the Land, is forthcoming from Harper Collins in 2020. His work has appeared or been featured in The New York Times, PBS Newshour, People Magazine en Español, The Paris Review, Fusion TV, Buzzfeed, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, New England Review, and Indiana Review, among others. He currently teaches in the Low-Res MFA program at Ashland University.
Martha Collins (poetry)
Martha Collins’s tenth book of poetry, Because What Else Could I Do, was published by the University of Pittsburgh in fall 2019. Her previous volumes include Admit One: An American Scrapbook, White Papers, and the book-length poem Blue Front, as well as the paired volumes Night Unto Night and Day Unto Day. Collins has also published four volumes of co-translated Vietnamese poetry and co-edited, with Kevin Prufer, Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries. Founder of the Creative Writing Program at U.Mass.-Boston and former Pauline Delaney Professor of Creative Writing at Oberlin College, she currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Porochista Khakpour (nonfiction)
Porochista Khakpour is the author of two novels Sons and Other Flammable Objects (2007), a 2007 California Book Award winner and The last Illusion (2014), and Sick: A Memoir (2018). Her other writing (essays, features, reviews, cover stories, and columns) have appeared in or are forthcoming in Harper’s, Slate, Salon, Al Jazeera America, Vice, GQ, Guernica, Rumpus, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, among others. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes. She is the recipient of a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Prose).
She has been awarded fellowships from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, Northwestern University, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and more.
She is a literary criticism columnist for The Virginia Quarterly Review, contributing editor at The Offing, and The Evergreen Review.
Marie Myung-Ok Lee (fiction)
Marie Myung-Ok Lee's novel, The Evening Hero, is forthcoming with Simon & Schuster, her young adult novel, Finding My Voice with Soho Press. Her stories and essays have been published in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, Salon, Guernica, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Nation, and the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and forthcoming in Smithsonian Magazine. She has been a judge for the National Book Awards and is a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. Lee is a founder and former board president of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and teaches fiction at Columbia where she is Writer in Residence.
Jess Row (fiction)
Jess Row is the author of the novel Your Face in Mine, two collections of short stories, The Train to Lo Wu and Nobody Ever Gets Lost, and a book of essays, White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Granta, Tin House, and many other venues, and has received Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a Whiting Writers Award. He teaches at the College of New Jersey and lives in New York City.
Schedule
Sample Schedule: 2019 Chautauqua Writers’ Festival
Day 0: Tuesday June 18
4 p.m.: by-reservation* shuttle departs Buffalo airport for Athenaeum Hotel (5:30 p.m. ETA)
8 p.m.: by-reservation* shuttle departs Buffalo airport for Athenaeum Hotel (9:30 p.m. ETA)
dinner: on your own at Brick Walk Cafe (5-8 p.m.), Heirloom Restaurant soft opening (5-8 p.m., reservation recommended) or possible other locations
all day: check in to room at Athenaeum Hotel front desk in lobby
Day 1: Wednesday June 19
8-9 a.m.: festival registration and continental breakfast, Athenaeum Hotel lobby
9-11 a.m.: introductory intensive with Megan Stielstra (workshop participants only), Athenaeum Hotel parlor
11:10-11:30 a.m.: director's welcome from Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Athenaeum Hotel parlor
11:30-11:40 a.m.: orientation briefing from Megan Stielstra, Athenaeum Hotel parlor
lunch: on your own at Afterwords Cafe (9 a.m.-2 p.m.) or possible other locations
1 p.m.: panel, "Reclaiming My Time: World History, Personal History, and Other Coopted Narratives," Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Ballroom
2:30 p.m.: related breakout sessions, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall (various rooms)
3:30-5:30 p.m.: workshop meetings, Athenaeum Hotel AND Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall (various rooms)
dinner: on your own at Brick Walk Cafe (5-8 p.m.) or possible other locations
8 p.m.: reading: Michael Martone, Khadijah Queen and Megan Stielstra, Athenaeum Hotel parlor; hotel bar will be open following
Day 2: Thursday June 20
7-9 a.m.: continental breakfast, Athenaeum Hotel Chautauqua Room
9-11 a.m.: workshop meetings, Athenaeum Hotel AND Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall (various rooms)
lunch: on your own at Afterwords Cafe (9 a.m.-2 p.m.), Heirloom Restaurant soft opening (reservation recommended) or possible other locations
2 p.m.: Jericho Brown keynote, Athenaeum Hotel parlor
dinner: on your own at Brick Walk Cafe (5-8 p.m.), Heirloom Restaurant soft opening (5-8 p.m., reservation recommended), La Familia Restaurant (5-8:30 p.m.) or possible other locations
7 p.m.: reading: Marie-Helene Bertino, Jericho Brown, Alex Marzano-Lesnevich and Jill McDonough, Athenaeum Hotel parlor; hotel bar will be open following
Day 3: Friday June 21
7-9 a.m.: continental breakfast, Athenaeum Hotel Chautauqua Room
9-11 a.m.: workshop meetings, Athenaeum Hotel AND Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall (various rooms)
lunch: on your own at Afterwords Cafe (9 a.m.-2 p.m.), Heirloom Restaurant soft opening (reservation recommended) or possible other locations
1 p.m.: panel, "Reclaiming Voice: The Recuperative Promise of Poetry," Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Ballroom
2:30 p.m.: related breakout sessions, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall (various rooms)
dinner: on your own at Brick Walk Cafe (5-8 p.m.), Heirloom Restaurant soft opening (5-8 p.m., reservation recommended), La Familia Restaurant (5-8:30 p.m.) or possible other locations
7 p.m.: community reading, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Ballroom; hotel bar will be open following
Day 4: Saturday June 22
7-9 a.m.: continental breakfast, Athenaeum Hotel Chautauqua Room
9-11 a.m.: final workshop meetings, Athenaeum Hotel AND Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall (various rooms)
12 p.m.: by-reservation* shuttle departs Athenaeum Hotel for Buffalo airport (1:30 p.m. ETA)
lunch: on your own at Afterwords Cafe (9 a.m.-2 p.m.), Brick Walk Cafe official opening day (exact hours tba), Heirloom Restaurant official opening day (reservation recommended) or possible other locations
1 p.m.: panel, "Teaching to Reclaim: Towards an Inclusive Creative Writing Pedagogy," Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Ballroom
2:30 p.m.: related breakout sessions, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall (various rooms)
afternoon: farewell gathering tbd
Staying past Saturday afternoon?
All festival attendees must leave the grounds by 5pm Saturday unless they have arranged for extended lodging at the Athenaeum Hotel or purchased a Saturday evening entertainment ticket or purchased a gate pass.
Sunday 1 p.m.: by-reservation* shuttle departs Athenaeum Hotel for Buffalo airport (2:30 p.m. ETA)
Sunday 5 p.m.: by-reservation* shuttle departs Athenaeum Hotel for Buffalo airport (6:30 p.m. ETA)
Registration/Dining/Lodging
Registration Options
Register here!
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Institutions hoping to sponsor the attendance of their undergraduate or graduate students may do so at discounted registration and lodging rates. Contact Emily Carpenter at ecarpenter@chq.org to learn more.
Standard Registration: $550 (deadline May 31)
Includes four workshop meetings with a small group of no more than 12 writers, an introductory intensive with all workshop groups combined, an individual consultation with your workshop faculty member, space-limited Tuesday and weekend shuttle from/to Buffalo airport, daily continental breakfast, and all components of Explorations Registration.
Explorations Registration: $200
Includes space-limited Tuesday and Saturday shuttle from/to Buffalo airport, daily continental breakfast, faculty readings, a community reading, the keynote address, panel discussions, a variety breakout sessions engaging participants in practical approaches to the panel topics.
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A Festival rate at the historic Athenaeum Hotel is available to all Standard and Explorations registrants: $100/night for a single-occupancy room or $50/night for each person in a double-occupancy room. (You can be assigned a roommate if you don't have one.) This rate applies for Tuesday check-in through Saturday check-out only. The Athenaeum is centrally located* on the grounds with an impressive view of Chautauqua Lake, and it will also host many of the Festival's programs. Call 1-800-821-1881 once you've registered, stating to the hotel staff that you are eligible for this rate.
Anyone can commute from home or arrange their own housing on or nearby our historic grounds if they prefer.
*Those concerned about the navigability of the steep hill beside the Athenaeum Hotel should reach out to us directly at writersfestival@chq.org, allowing 48 hours for a reply, to ensure accessibility.
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Director
Chautauqua Writers' Festival Director
Originally from Buffalo, Dr. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise, chosen by Claudia Rankine as winner of the 2010 Red Hen Press Benjamin Saltman Award, a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen, 2016) and Personal Science (Tupelo Press, 2017). Travesty Generator, winner of the 2018 Noemi Press Poetry Award, is forthcoming from Noemi in 2019.
Bertram is a 2014 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Poetry Fellowship and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
She can be contacted about Festival-related matters at writersfestival@chq.org.
The founding directors of the Writers' Festival were Diana Hume George, George Looney and Philip Terman.
Past Faculty
Fiction Faculty
- Lee K. Abbott
- Dean Bakopoulos
- Aimee Bender
- Ron Carlson
- Dan Chaon
- Peter Ho Davies
- Anthony Doerr
- Tony Earley
- Brian Evenson
- Abby Frucht
- Jaimy Gordon
- Derek Green
- Laura Kasischke
- Jill McCorkle
- Tom Noyes
- Alissa Nutting
- Stewart O'Nan
- Pamela Painter
- Ann Pancake
- Alberto Álvaro Ríos
Nonfiction Faculty
- Faith Adiele
- Valerie Boyd
- Tom Bridwell
- Beth Ann Fennelly
- Thomas French
- Philip Gerard
- Diana Hume George
- Lee Gutkind
- Barbara Hurd
- Mary Karr
- Greg Kuzma
- Suzannah Lessard
- Jacob Levenson
- Joe Mackall
- Nancy McCabe
- Dinty W. Moore
- Leslie Rubinkowski
- Mike Scalise
- Patsy Sims
Poetry Faculty
- Maggie Anderson
- Robin Becker
- David Citino
- Carl Dennis
- Denise Duhamel
- Stephen Dunn
- Frank X. Gaspar
- Margaret Gibson
- francine j. harris
- William Heyen
- Patricia Jabbeh Wesley
- Dorianne Laux
- Malena Mörling
- Hoa Nguyen
- Alicia Ostriker
- Stanley Plumley
- Lia Purpura
- Bruce Smith
- Maura Stanton
- Michael Waters
- Marcus Wicker
Keynotes, Panelists and Breakout Leaders
- Meg Day
- Devin Donovan
- Kate Glavin
- Jimin Han
- Nicole Homer
- Linda Lowen
- Maria Maldonado
- Susannah Nevison
- Jillian Powers
- Kenyatta Rogers
- Mike Scalise
- Mathias Svalina
- Jim Tobin
