[Official Conference Page][Registration Page]

George Getschow, writer in residence of the nationally renowned Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, is inviting nonfiction writers and anyone interested in the narrative craft to the 5th annual conference, July 24-26 at the Hilton DFW Lakes Executive Conference Center in Grapevine, Texas, five minutes from the DFW Airport. This year's conference features a diverse group of storytellers from genres unexplored in previous years, including travel writing, broadcast, nature writing and documentary film.

Keynotes include one of America's literary lions, Paul Theroux, author of acclaimed travel literature, short-story collections, novels, criticism and children’s books; Ira Glass, National Public Radio's host and producer of “This American Life” and editor of a breathtaking anthology, "The New Kings of Nonfiction"; Alma Guillermoprieto, Latin American correspondent for “The New Yorker” and “The New York Review of Books." Sonia Nazario will moderate a panel on covering the the border with Dallas Morning News reporters Dianne Solis and Alfredo Corchado. The nation's foremost humor writer, Roy Blount Jr., will also be speaking at the conference, along with Stephanie Elizondo Griest, the "accidental memoirist" of Mexican-American society; “Vogue's” renowned narrative essay writer, Julia Reed; the nation's leading authority on Abraham Lincoln's assassination, Michael Kauffman; Gordon Grice, “the Stephen King of nature writers”; Texas Monthly's "the patron saint of lost causes," Michael Hall; “Wall Street Journal” foreign correspondent and hunger expert, Roger Thurow; internationally acclaimed documentary filmmakers Allen Mondell and Cynthia Salzman Mondell; Little Brown senior editor John Parsley; Village Voice Media's Michael Mooney, whose narratives were selected this year for the renowned anthologies Best American Crime Reporting and Best American Sports Writing; and a number of other storytellers.

Bob Shacochis, a National Book Award Winner ("Swimming in the Volcano") who spoke at last year's conference, says the Mayborn is "the most compelling, remarkable writers' conference I've attended in more than 20 years of writers' conferences around the nation. Thanks to the Mayborn tribe of storytellers, I think of Dallas as a preferred destination, a center of literary gravity, perhaps the very heart of the universe these days for nonfiction writers in America."

The conference includes a book manuscript and essay writing contest. Deadline for submissions is June 15. In the essay competition, your essay or article must be no more than 20 pages double spaced. In the book writing competition, you submit one complete chapter and a chapter-by-chapter narrative synopsis of the rest of the book.

If your essay is selected by our panel of judges, you will enter one of five, 10 person workshops and spend all day Friday (July 24) getting your essay or article critiqued and evaluated by the workshop and the workshop leaders. Our workshop leaders are all editors and writers for major magazines and newspapers. The top six articles and essays win $12,000 in cash prizes. The 10 best articles or essays, including the six cash award winners, will be published in a popular literary journal called Ten Spurs. To read some of the essays published in Ten Spurs most recent issue, go to www.themayborn.com.

If your manuscript is selected by our panel of judges, you would enter one of two, 10-person workshops, and spend all day Friday getting your ms critiqued and evaluated by the workshop and the workshop leaders, both of whom are published authors. You will also receive a written critique from the workshop leader. The first-place manuscript winner receives a $3,000 cash prize. Mayborn book award winners continue to win major book publishing contracts. Donna Johnson's memoir about growing up evangelical, Holy Ghost Girl: Scenes from the Apocalypse, will be published by Gotham Books. And Susannah Charleson's Scent of the Missing is slated for hardcover release by Houghton Mifflin in the spring or summer of 2010.

Conference fees are $295 for the general public. Educator fees are $270. Student fees are $225. The fees include fine dining. Conference seating is limited. Scholarship information is available on the conference website.

For more information, contact George Getschow at getschow@unt.edu or by phone: 972-746-1633, or Project Coordinator Jo Ann Ballantine, joann.ballantine@unt.edu, 940-565-4778.

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