2021 Virtual Literary Festival

Mesha Maren

Mesha Maren, the author of Sugar Run, reads from and talks about her work as part of the 19th annual Spring Literary Festival at Western Carolina University.

Kristen Radtke

A live reading and conversation with Kristen Radtke, the author of the graphic nonfiction book Imagine Wanting Only This (2017), and the forthcoming books Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness (July 2021), for which she received a 2019 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, and Terrible Men, a graphic novel, all from Pantheon. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, The Guardian, GQ, Vogue, NPR, and many other places.

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips

A live reading and conversation with Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, author of the short story collection Sleepovers, which won the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize, was also longlisted for The Story Prize and is forthcoming in Italian. Ashleigh's stories have appeared in The Paris Review, The Oxford American, and others. Her essays have appeared in Our State and Lit Hub. She teaches fiction at West Virginia Wesleyan College's low residency MFA and is a Southern editor for Joyland Magazine.

Camille T. Dungy