MEDIA ADVISORY: 57th Annual UND Writers Conference is March 25-27

The University of North Dakota’s 57th Annual Writers Conference will be held from Wednesday to Friday, March 25-27, at the Memorial Union.

Since its inception in 1970, the Writers Conference — free and open to the public — has brought writers and authors of national renown to Grand Forks for panels, workshops and book readings.

This year’s conference, titled “Fables & Futures,” promises an expanded schedule of events and new experiences for attendees, including additional readings, a new panel focused on the creative profession and a workshop led by a literary agent.

Virtual attendance will again be available for sessions held in the Memorial Union Ballroom.

Visit the conference website for all information on schedules, activities, guests and virtual registration.

On this year’s theme, Patrick Henry, conference director and associate professor of Creative Writing, recently wrote in UND Today that its inspiration draws from the fables that have persisted for generations.

“Since time immemorial, stories have served our community by fostering ties between us,” he said. “They have allowed us to better understand the world around us and to imagine a better future for all.

“Stories are not merely decorative; they are the fiber that weaves our community together.”

In honoring this, Henry and the Writers Conference team have invited award-winning authors who have “put their own unique spins on timeless classics.”

Authors and Artists

Full biographies for each guest are also available to read on the conference website.

George Saunders is a multi-award-winning novelist, short story writer and essayist who’s written two novels, four collections of short stories, a novella, a book of essays and an award-winning children’s book. In 2006, Saunders was awarded both a MacArthur Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 2013 he was listed among TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

His recently released novel, “Vigil,” takes place at the bedside of an oil company CEO, in the twilight hours of his life, as he is ferried from this world into the next, and has been praised in advance as “a wise, playful, electric novel.” His Man Booker Prize-winning first novel, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” was published in 2017; Colson Whitehead noted it as: “A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.” His most recent book is “Liberation Day,” a masterful collection of short stories exploring ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans.

Saunders’ award-winning works have led to several television appearances, and his work appears regularly in The New Yorker, GQ, and Harpers Magazine.

Maria Dahvana Headley is the New York Times-bestselling, World Fantasy and Hugo Award-winning author of eight books, most recently “Beowulf: A New Translation,” which won the Harold Morton Landon Translation Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and “The Mere Wife,” a contemporary novel adaptation of Beowulf. Her full cast musical adaptation of “The Aeneid,” titled “Vergil: a Mythological Musical,” came out from Audible in 2023. She delivered the Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature at Oxford in 2023, and has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence and Bennington, among many others.

Headley grew up in the high desert of Idaho on a survivalist sled dog ranch, where she spent summers plucking the winter coat from her father’s wolf.

Anna Maria Hong is the author of the poetry collections “Age of Glass,” winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Poetry Competition, and “Fablesque,” winner of Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize, and the novella “H & G,” winner of the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Clarissa Dalloway Prize. Her writings appear in many publications including The Nation, American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review, Harvard Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry Northwest, The Common, Poem-a-Day and The Best American Poetry.

A recipient of fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Amy Clampitt Poet Residency, the Hawthornden Foundation, and the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation, she is an Associate Professor at Mount Holyoke College.

Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is a Japanese and Kanaka Maoli (native Hawaiian) writer from Honolulu, Hawaii. She is the author of the story collection “Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare,” a USA Today national bestseller that was named an Indies Introduce title and a September Indie Next pick by the American Booksellers Association. Her fiction has been featured in Granta, Conjunctions, Joyland, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the Keene Prize for Literature and has received support from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Megan received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers, where she was a Fiction Fellow. Currently a Fiction Editor for No Tokens journal, she lives in Honolulu.

Ananda Lima is the author of “Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil” and “Mother/land,” winner of the Hudson Prize. Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Poets.org, Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is a contributing editor at Poets & Writers and program curator at StoryStudio, Chicago.

Lima was named in Newcity’s 2025 Lit 50 list, recognizing influential people and organizations shaping Chicago’s literary culture. She was a mentor at the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program and the inaugural Latinx-in-Publishing WIP Fellow, sponsored by Macmillan Publishers. She has an MA in Linguistics (UCLA) and an MFA in Creative Writing (Rutgers-Newark). “Craft,” her fiction debut, was longlisted for the Story Prize and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. The New York Times describes it as “a remarkable debut that announces the arrival of a towering talent in speculative fiction.”

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet, educator, and translator of trans experience. His honors include being named Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, the Premio Nuevas Voces, and the inaugural Ambroggio Prize. Among his seven poetry books are “lo terciario/ the tertiary,” longlisted for the National Book Award and winner of the Lambda Literary Award, and “while they sleep (under the bed is another country),” which inspired the title for “no existe un mundo poshuracán” at the Whitney Museum.

“The Rust of History,” his translation of poetry by Sotero Rivera Avilés, was longlisted for ALTA’s National Translation Award, and his translation of Ada Limón’s poem dedicated to NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is currently on its way to Jupiter’s moon.

In September 2025, Graywolf Press published his epic poem “Algarabía.” Roque currently teaches in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, is the creative editor for sx salon: a small axe literary platform and serves the needs of a fierce cat named Pietri.

Amber Sparks is the author of a recent novel, “Happy People Don’t Live Here,” four collections of short fiction, and a hybrid novella written with Robert Kloss and illustrated by Matt Kish. Her essays, film and book criticism have appeared widely online, in BrightWall/Dark Room, Indiewire, Bustle, The Paris Review, Slate, Tin House, New York Mag, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, daughter and two cats.

Beatriz Cortez is a multidisciplinary artist born in El Salvador and based in Los Angeles. Her work explores simultaneity, multiple temporalities, the untimely and speculative imaginaries. Her work is currently on view at LACMA and Commonwealth and Council, in Los Angeles; UCR Arts, in Riverside, Calif.; and ICA in San Diego, in Encinitas. Her work was included in the 60th Venice Biennale, “Foreigners Everywhere,” (2024) and the 14th Shanghai Biennale, “Cosmos Cinema” (2024).

Cortez is a recipient of the Latinx Arts Fellowship (2023), New School Vera List Center Borderlands Fellowship (2022-24), Artadia Los Angeles Award (2020), Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Artist Grant (2018) and California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists (2016). She holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a doctorate in Latin American Literature from Arizona State University. She teaches sculpture and critical theory at the University of California, Davis.

Penelope Burns came to Gelfman Schneider Literary Agents as an intern in 2012 after graduating from Colgate University and attending the Denver Publishing Institute. She became a full-time agent in late 2015 after working briefly at a book-to-film scouting agency. She considers herself a “generalist,” representing an eclectic variety of literary and commercial fiction in adult, YA, and middle grade, as well as some narrative nonfiction.