Chautauqua Writers’ Festival


June 19-22, 2019
Writing & Reclamation

The 2019 Chautauqua Writers’ Festival takes place over the four days (Wed-Sat) 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 2019 theme is Writing & Reclamation, 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 19 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 "2019 Schedule" tab). 

2019 Keynote/Panels

Keynote

Brown Jericho

Jericho Brown
1 p.m. Thursday, June 20
Parlor, Athenaeum Hotel
Explorations or Standard registration required to attend.

Jericho Brown is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Brown’s first book, Please (New Issues 2008), won the American Book Award. His second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon 2014), won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was named one of the best of the year by Library Journal, Coldfront, and the Academy of American Poets. He is also the author of the collection The Tradition (2019). His poems have appeared in Buzzfeed, The Nation, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Time, and The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry anthologies. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta.

Panels & Breakout Sessions 

Attendees can look forward to panels featuring writers, teachers, editors and publishers across three days of the festival on these topics:

Reclaiming My Time: World History, Personal History, and Other Coopted Narratives
Wednesday, June 19
panel: Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, Anita Powell, Megan Stielstra, Christie Towers (1 p.m., Ballroom, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall)
breakout sessions: Elizabeth Mosier, Hermine Pinson (2:30 p.m., 2nd floor locations, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall)

Reclaiming Voice: The Recuperative Promise of Poetry
Friday, June 21
panel: Jericho Brown, Lisa Fay Coutley, Shira Dentz, Richard Hamilton, Adam Tedesco (1 p.m., Ballroom, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall)
breakout sessions: S. Brook Corfman, Jessica Fischoff, Sarah Shapiro (2:30 p.m., 2nd floor locations, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall)

Teaching to Reclaim: Towards an Inclusive Creative Writing Pedagogy
Saturday, June 22
panel: Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Renee Christopher, Keith Jones, Jillian Powers, Kent Shaw (1 p.m., Ballroom, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall)
breakout sessions: Renee Christopher, Kent Shaw, Christie Towers (2:30 p.m., 2nd floor locations, Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall)