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This story was updated March 31, 2025 to reflect changes in the festival's featured speakers.

The annual Spring Literary Festival returns March 19-20, bringing award-winning authors Jennifer Egan, Deborah Landau and Madeline ffitch* to campus for a series of lectures and readings.

The festival, a longstanding tradition, showcases some of the most influential voices in contemporary literature and fosters an environment where students, faculty and the wider community can engage in meaningful discussions about storytelling, poetry and the power of the written word. 

*Poet Kerri Dochartaigh was originally scheduled to speak at the festival. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan, best known for “” (2010) and “” (2022), will present both a lecture and a reading. Her work has earned numerous accolades, including the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Egan, a former president of PEN America, has been recognized for her contributions to both fiction and journalism, with writing featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Harper’s Magazine.

Poet Deborah Landau, author of “” (2019) and “” (2023) , brings her lyrical and deeply introspective work to the festival. A Guggenheim Fellow, Landau’s poetry explores themes of mortality, femininity and resilience. Her work has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times, and she currently serves as the director of the  at New York University.

Madeline ffitch is the author of the short story collection Valparaiso, Round the Horn and the novel Stay and Fight, which was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Lamda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, the Washington State Book Award, the LA Times Book Award, and was the 2023 Ģ����Ƶ Center for the Book pick for the National Book Festival. She is the recipient of an O. Henry Award and her story "Seeing Through Maps" was chosen for the 2024 Best American Short Stories anthology. ffitch's writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, and elsewhere. Her novel about Appalachian antifascism is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She writes and organizes in Appalachian Ģ����Ƶ.

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Wednesday, March 19th

7:30 p.m.: A Lecture by Jennifer Egan (Walter Hall Rotunda)

8:30 p.m.: A Reading by Deborah Landau (Walter Hall Rotunda)

Thursday, March 20th

10:00 a.m.: A Lecture by Madeline ffitch (Scripps Hall 111)

11:00 a.m.: A Lecture by Deborah Landau (Scripps Hall 111)

7:30 p.m.: A Reading by Kerri Dochartaigh (Baker Center Theater)

8:30 p.m.: A Reading by Jennifer Egan (Baker Center Theater)

About the Festival

Since 1986, the Spring Literary Festival has featured some of the world's finest, most distinguished writers of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. The festival is sponsored by the Creative Writing program in the English Department and is generously funded by the College of Arts and Sciences. All readings and lectures are free and open to the public.

For more information, contact David Wanczyk, Spring Literary Festival Coordinator.