University of North Texas

The 8th annual Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference will be the first literary conclave ever to explore the myriad ways in which journalists and authors crisscross the murky terrain between fiction, nonfiction and other genres.

Featured keynote speakers are:

• July 20 - Luis Alberto Urrea, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist who has published extensively in all genres, including poetry.
• July 21 - Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and editor of 26 works of fiction, history, biography and memoir.
• July 22 - Isabel Wilkerson, right, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative, The Warmth of Other Suns, about black America’s great Diaspora.

The conference will be at the Hilton DFW Lakes Executive Conference Center in Grapevine. Conference seating is limited. A $20 discount is available to participants who register by April 11. Conference registration includes all speaker sessions as well as several meals. Full conference registration fees are:

• $295 for the public
• $225 for students
• $270 for educators.

Individual tickets are available to guests of conference attendees and the general public for Friday, Saturday and Sunday keynote events.

• Friday night’s Southwest Soiree, at Austin Ranch, Grapevine, $60 (includes dinner)
• Saturday night’s Literary Lights Dinner, $100 (includes dinner)
• Sunday morning keynote, $30 (includes refreshments)

Register online.

Conference participants may enter the Mayborn's national writing competition and earn a coveted spot in a Mayborn Writing Workshop. Cash prizes totaling $15,000 and a book contract will be awarded through the conference's manuscript and narrative/essay writing competition.

• Find competition rules.

The 2012 conference will also host a special panel comprised of Little, Brown and Company’s top nonfiction editor and four prominent literary agents who will unveil the mystery of writing, editing and publishing for the literary market.

Other speakers include:

• Debby Applegate, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the The Most Famous Man in America, a biography of Henry Ward Beecher
• Tom Junod, writer-at-large for Esquire, author of the 9/11 piece, "The Falling Man”
• Jeanne Marie Laskas, a nonfiction author whose narratives have appeared in GQ, Esquire and other magazines
• Alisa Valdes, a former staff writer for the Boston Globe and Los Angeles Times, who has become a bestselling fiction writer

- Leslie Wimmer, News Promotions