Belton, Texas – The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor literary journal, Windhover, will host its Writers’ Festival from Wednesday, February 17, to Friday, February 19, in the Lord Conference Center of the Parker Academic Center on the UMHB campus. All Writers’ Fest event are free and open to the public.
This year’s festival includes presentations and workshops by notable authors, lyricists, and poets, including Jeanne Murray Walker, Greg Garrett, Brent Newsom, and music group Still on the Hill.
One of the festival highlights, the annual George Nixon Memorial Lecture, features a writer who examines the connections between faith and writing. Jeanne Murray Walker will be delivering this year’s lecture. She is a celebrated poet, playwright, writer, and professor of English at The University of Delaware. She has written eight volumes of poetry as well as her memoir, The Geography of Memory: A Pilgrimage Through Alzheimer’s about the decade she spent caring for her mother. Walker is also a collaborating editor Shadow and Light: Literature and the Life of Faith, a historical anthology of literature.
Walker is an Atlantic Monthly Fellow at Bread Loaf School of English. She has also been awarded a Pew Fellowship in The Arts, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, eight Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowships, and The Glenna Luschei-Prairie Schooner Prize.
BBC Radio calls Baylor professor Greg Garrett "one of America's leading voices on religion and culture." Among his theological works are The Gospel According to Hollywood, Stories from the Edge: A Theology of Grief, and One Fine Potion: The Literary Magic of Harry Potter, which was named a 2011 Best Theological Book by the Association of Theological Booksellers. His most recent nonfiction books are Entertaining Judgment: The Afterlife in Literature and Culture and My Church Is Not Dying: Episcopalians in the 21st Century. He is currently working on a book on the undead in literature and culture.
Brent Newsom’s first poetry collection, Love’s Labors, was published in 2015. His poems have also appeared in The Southern Review, Windhover, Rock & Sling, Relief, and Best New Poets. A Louisiana native, he and his family now live in Shawnee, Oklahoma, where he teaches writing and literature at Oklahoma Baptist University.
Still On The Hill is a successful folk group that has produced seven widely acclaimed CDs. The duo uses traditional instruments from their home in the Ozarks, mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar, and harmonica, and oddities such as the scrub board, musical saw, and ukelin to create a kaleidoscope of musical color and texture.
For more information about the Writers’ Festival, contact Dr. Nathaniel L. Hansen or visit the event’s website: academics.umhb.edu/writersfestival.
Schedule of Events
Wednesday, February 17
2:00 UMHB Creative Writing Showcase
3:00 Panel A: Donna Walker-Nixon, Joe R. Christopher, Christine Boldt
4:15 Panel B: Beth Gylys, Sally Thomas, Donovan McAbee, Christina Seymour
7:00 Windhover Dessert Reception
7:30 Brent Newsom Reading
8:30 Open Mic Reading
Thursday, February 18
8:30 Panel C: J. Stephen Rhodes, Jonathan Kanary, Seth Pace
9:45 Panel D: Jill Reid, Derek Updegraff, Charity Gingerich
10:50 Greg Garrett: Spiritual Storytelling Workshop*
1:20 Still on the Hill: Songwriting Workshop*
3:15 Jeanne Murray Walker: Poetry Workshop*
5:00 Greg Garrett Reading
7:30 Jeanne Murray Walker “George Nixon Memorial Lecture”
8:45 Still on the Hill concert
Friday, February 7, 2014
8:30 Brent Newsom: Fiction Workshop*
10:00 Helen Kwiatkowski Art Workshop* [in Baugh Center for Visual Arts #113]
12:45 Panel E: Christopher A. Fahy, Mark Bennion, Devon Miller-Duggan, Richard Pierce
* denotes conference registration required
