Celebrating its 23rd summer session, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference will run from Tuesday, July 24, through Saturday, Aug. 4, and will feature readings, panels, and lectures by a distinguished faculty and nationally-recognized editors, publishers, and literary agents.

The conference will begin with a reading by fiction writer Margot Livesey on Tuesday, July 24. The reading is free, open to the public, and will be held at 8:15 p.m. in the Mary Sue Cushman Room of the Bairnwick Women’s Center on the campus of the University of the South. 

Margot Livesey is the author of seven novels—Homework, Criminals, The Missing World, Eva Moves the Furniture, Banishing Verona, The House on Fortune Street, and The Flight of Gemma Hardy—and a collection of stories, Learning by Heart. A recipient of Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, she teaches at Emerson College in Boston and is the fiction editor of Ploughshares.

The following 11 days will feature readings by National Book Award winners Alice McDermott (7/29, 8:15 p.m.) and John Casey (7/26, 8:15 p.m.), Pulitzer Prize winner and former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand (8/3, 8:15 p.m.), as well as award-winning poets Daniel Anderson (7/26, 4:15 p.m.), Andrew Hudgins (7/31, 8:15 p.m.), Maurice Manning (8/1, 4:15 p.m.), conference director Wyatt Prunty (8/4, 4:15 p.m.), Mary Jo Salter (7/25, 8:15 p.m.), Dave Smith (8/2, 8:15 p.m.), A.E. Stallings (7/29, 4:15 p.m.), Sidney Wade (7/27, 4:15 p.m.), and Caki Wilkinson (7/28, 4:15 p.m.).

Readings will also feature best-selling and critically acclaimed fiction writers Richard Bausch (8/4, 8:15 p.m.), Tony Earley (8/1, 8:15 p.m.), Randall Kenan (7/28, 8:15 p.m.), Jill McCorkle (7/25, 4:15 p.m.), Erin McGraw (8/2, 4:15 p.m.), Christine Schutt (8/3, 4:15 p.m.), Allen Wier (7/30, 4:15 p.m.), Kevin Wilson (7/28, 4:15 p.m.), and Steve Yarbrough (7/27, 8:15 p.m.), and esteemed playwrights Daisy Foote (7/31, 4:15 p.m.) and Dan O’Brien (7/30, 8:15 p.m.).

Editors from Penguin, Knopf, Grove/Atlantic, Algonquin Books, New Directions, Poetry, The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, and many other journals and publishing houses will offer panels, while Laura Maria Censabella, Elizabeth Diggs, Daisy Foote, and Dan O’Brien will take part in a tribute to the late Romulus Linney, legendary playwright and long-time friend of the conference. A complete conference schedule can be found online at www.sewaneewriters.org/conference/schedule. Authors’ books are available at the University Book & Supply Store.

Supported by the Walter E. Dakin Memorial Fund established through the estate of the late Tennessee Williams, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference offers instruction and criticism to developing writers through a series of workshops, readings, and craft lectures in poetry, fiction, and playwriting. Lectures and readings will be held in the Mary Sue Cushman Room of the Bairnwick Women’s Center on Mississippi Avenue, one block south of University Avenue. Admission to all public events is free, but space may be limited.

For more information, call 931 598-1654 or visit the Sewanee Writers’ Conference website at sewaneewriters.org.