OHIO students have class outside at the Scripps Hall Amphitheater on a spring day

Spring Literary Festival celebrates 40 years with award-winning authors

The festival will take place March 25–26, bringing authors George Bilgere, Hala Alyan, and Jeff VanderMeer to OHIO. Through lectures, readings and conversations, the festival offers students and community members the opportunity to engage directly with these writers.

Emma Stevenson B.S. ‘27 | March 16, 2026

The Spring Literary Festival returns for the 40th year on March 25-26 with distinguished authors George Bilgere, Hala Alyan and Jeff VanderMeer. Hosted by the Creative Writing program in the Department of English, and funded by the College of Arts and Sciences, the event continues a long tradition, bringing the Ohio University community together with writers through conversations, lectures and readings. All readings and lectures are free and open to the public.

George Bilgere

The widely recognized poet George Bilgere will hold a reading and lecture. The author of “The Good Kiss” (2002), “Haywire” (2006) and more, has won awards like the University of Akron Poetry Prize and the May Swenson Poetry Award. Recently, Bilgere has been awarded the 2022 Readers’ Choice Award from Rattle Magazine and the 2021 Editor’s Choice Award from New Ohio Review. He is currently an English professor at John Carroll University.

Hala Alyan

Award-winning author and poet Hala Alyan will be presenting both a lecture and a reading at the festival. Her novel “Salt Houses” (2017) won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the Arab American Book Award, and was a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize. Alyan’s works of poetry in "The Twenty-Ninth Year” (2019) and “The Moon That Turns You Back” (2024) are also highly acclaimed. She has also been featured in the New Yorker, the Academy of American Poets, the New York Times, the Guardian, and Guernica.

Jeff VanderMeer

Renowned author of the Southern Reach trilogy, Jeff VanderMeer will open the festival with a conversation on Wednesday morning at the Athena Cinema, followed by a lecture and a reading on Thursday. The first book in VanderMeer's trilogy, “Annihilation” (2014), won the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, and has a movie adaptation. He is the recipient of an NEA-funded Florida Individual Artist Fellowship for excellence in fiction and a Florida Artist Enhancement Grant; he is a four-time World Fantasy Award winner and 20-time nominee. VanderMeer was a 2019 National Book Award judge for fiction and was a judge for the Eisner Awards, the World Fantasy Award and the Philip K. Dick Award.