Please note that the Year of Creative Writers and Festival of Writers have concluded. The website is here for reference or informational purposes.
Three universities. A host of authors. And a year of perspectives, provocations, ideas, and inspiration.
Join us for “A Year of Creative Writers,” a series of conversations in Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield with some of the nation’s leading creative writers and authors. Since the pandemic required cancelling in-person gatherings last spring, we are extending this series into 2021.
From the U.S. poet laureate to a Pulitzer-prize winner, an actor and playwright, the speakers are sure to be energizing and inspiring. Tell your students and your neighbors to save the dates for this exceptional variety of voices, some you may know and some you will want to know.
Writers are the lifeblood of any social and cultural moment. They work in many genres; they are seers and sirens; they chronicle, they future-trip, they enchant, and they trouble. Read and cherished by people from all walks of life, they are an unsung public good. In these times, when the written word proliferates in a variety of forms, the writer’s craft needs champions like never before. Join us to celebrate and be transformed.
Supported by the Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities.
Presented by the Humanities Research Institute (HRI) and the Creative Writing Program / Department of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Co-Sponsored by the Institute for the Humanities (UIC), UIC Program for Writers, UIS Creative Writing, the Champaign Public Library, the Urbana Free Library, Illinois Public Media, and The Illini Union Bookstore.