2023 Spring Literary Festival set for March 29-30

The 2023 Spring Literary Festival is set for March 29-30 on the Athens Campus of Ohio University.

The festival, hosted by the English Department, features authors Barrie Jean Borich, Denise Duhamel, and Megan Giddings.

Barrie Jean Borich

Borich is the author of "Apocalypse, Darling" (Ohio State University Press: Mad Creek Books/Machete Series in Literary Nonfiction 2018), which was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award. Her memoir "Body Geographic" (University of Nebraska Press/American Lives Series 2013) won the Lambda Literary Award in Memoir. Borich’s book, "My Lesbian Husband" (Graywolf 1999, 2000), an LGBTQ classic, won the American Library Association Stonewall Book Award, according to her website profile.

Borich’s essays have been anthologized in: "Critical Creative Writing;" "Waveform: Twenty-First Century Essays by Women;" and "After Montaigne: Contemporary Essayists Cover the Essays," and have been cited in "Best American Essays and Best American Non-Required Reading."

She is the recipient of The Florida Review Editor’s Prize in the Essay and the Crab Orchard Review Literary Nonfiction Prize, and her work has appeared in Ecotone, The Seneca Review, Hotel Amerika, Indiana Review, TriQuarterly, Passages North, The Washington Post, The Rumpus, and many other literary journals.

Borich is an associate professor in the English Department and M.A. in Writing and Publishing Program at DePaul University in Chicago.

Denise Duhamel

Duhamel has published numerous collections of poetry, including "Second Story" (2021), "Scald" (2017), and "Blowout" (2013), which was a finalist for a National Books Critics Circle Award, "Ka-Ching!" (2009), "Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems" (2001), and "Kinky" (1997). She coedited, with Nick Carbo, "Sweet Jesus: Poems about the Ultimate Icon" (2002), and, with Maureen Seaton and David Trinidad, "Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry" (2007). Duhamel has also collaborated with Seaton on several poetry collections, including "Little Novels" (2002), "Oyl" (2000), and "Exquisite Politics" (1997), according to her website profile.

Duhamel’s honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has been included in several volumes of "Best American Poetry." It has also been featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and Bill Moyers’s PBS poetry special Fooling with Words. She is a professor at Florida International University.

Megan Giddings

Giddings has degrees from the University of Michigan and Indiana University. In 2018, she was a recipient of a Barbara Deming Memorial fund grant for feminist fiction. Her novel, "Lakewood," was published by Amistad in 2020. It was one of New York Magazine’s 10 best books of 2020, one of NPR’s best books of 2020, a Michigan Notable book for 2021, was nominated for two NAACP Image Awards, and a finalist for a 2020 LA Times Book Prize in the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction category, according to her website profile.

In 2021, she was named one of Indiana University’s 20 under 40. Her second novel, "The Women Could Fly" (Amistad 2022), was named one of The Washington Post’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy novels of 2022, one of Vulture’s Best Fantasy books of 2022, and was a New York Times Editors’ Choice.

She lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota.

About the Spring Literary 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.

The visiting writers are present throughout the festival, lecturing and reading from their work, and books by the authors are available for purchase after each program, and at Little Professor Book Center in Athens.

For more information, contact David Wanczyk, Spring Literary Festival Coordinator. A schedule of events will be posted on the university calendar.