Literary Festival

Chris Adrian is the author of four novels: Gob's Grief (2000), The Children's Hospital (2006), The Great Night (2011), and The New World (2014). In 2008, he published A Better Angel, a collection of short stories. His short fiction has also appeared in The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, McSweeney's, The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and Story. Adrian completed his bachelor's degree in English from the University of Florida in 1993. He received his M.D. from Eastern Virginia Medical School in 2001.

Jane Alberdeston teaches creative writing at Old Dominion University. Her work is published in various anthologies and journals, such as Callaloo, Hanging Loose Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, Sargasso: A Journal of Caribbean Literature, Skinny Poetry Review, The Acentos Review, Rock and Sling: A Journal of Witness, Louisiana Literature Review, among others. Her post-apocalyptical novel, Colony 51, is soon to be released by Jade Ibis Press. In 2025 she was the recipient of the Robin L. Hixon Award for her critical research on third-spaces in contemporary Puerto Rican poetry. Currently, she is developing a new speculative novel.

Emma Comery is a multidisciplinary writer and the recipient of the Cantrell Poetry Prize and the Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Award. Her work has appeared on Poets.org and in Arts & Letters Journal, Line of Advance, The Bend Magazine, and Military Families Magazine. Have You Landed? Military Love Stories In Essays is her debut essay collection.

Siobhan Fallon is the author of the PEN Center USA Literary Fiction Award-winning short story collection, You Know When the Men Are Gone, which was a Best Book Pick of 2011 by The San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Public Library, Self Magazine, and The New York Times, as well as the novel, The Confusion of Languages. Both examine military life at home and abroad. Siobhan’s essays and stories have been featured in The New York Times Modern Love, Washington Post Magazine, NPR’s Morning Edition, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, Stars and Stripes, The Huffington Post, Prairie Schooner, Guernica, the anthology Fire & Forget: Short Stories from the Long War, among others. Her current work is inspired by real events and explores the many controversies surrounding the Battle of the Little Bighorn. As a woman and Army spouse, she tackles unique perspectives of this violent chapter in American history.

Nicole Glover is the author of the acclaimed historical fantasy series, Murder and Magic, which includes The Starseekers. Her books have received rave starred reviews for their unique blend of mystery, history, and fantasy and have been featured in NPR,  En Forme, and the Virginian-Pilot. She's been a Library Reads pick, made the Locus bestseller list, and most recently won The Webster Award. She lives and works in Virginia plotting her next fictional murder.

Joe Jackson is the author of seven works of nonfiction and a novel. His last work, Black Elk: The Life of an American Visionary, was released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2016 and chronicles the life of Oglala Lakota holy man Black Elk, best known for his 1932 Black Elk Speaks. The biography received the following honors: Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography; Winner of the Society of American Historians' Francis Parkman Award; Best Biography of 2016, True West magazine; Winner of the Western Writers of America 2017 Spur Award, Best Western Biography; Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography; and One of the Best Books of 2016 from The Boston Globe. He has been the writer-in-residence at the James Thurber House and the Mina Hohenberg Darden Endowed Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Old Dominion University. His newest book, Splendid Liberators, was released by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in October 2025. His website is www.joejacksonbooks.com.

Julia Johnson grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana. She received her B.A. from Hollins College and her M.F.A. from the University of Virginia, where she was a Henry Hoyns Fellow. She is the author of the poetry collections Subsidence, The Falling Horse, and Naming the Afternoon. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, Cincinnati Review, Poetry International, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Conduit, Smartish Pace, Sixth Finch, The Afterlives of the New York School of Poets: An Anthology, and numerous other journals and anthologies. She edited the collection New and Collected Poems of Jane Gentry Vance and served as editor of The Mississippi Review, including a special issue, The Prose Poem, and 30: The Mississippi Review, an anthology marking the journal's thirty years of publication. Johnson was Professor of English at the University of Kentucky, where she founded and directed the MFA in Creative Writing Program and served as Director of the Creative Writing Division.

Bob Kunzinger is the author of twelve volumes of non-fiction, including the recent memoir, Curious Men: Lost in the Congo. His work includes the critically acclaimed The Iron Scar: A Father and Son in Siberia, A Third Place, and Penance, and has been celebrated by authors Tim O’Brien and Sharon Dilworth, S.E. Hinton, actor/author Martin Sheen, Jackie Lyden of NPR, Yahoo Entertainment and more. His essays have appeared in many publications, and several have been noted by Best American Essays. He has taught English, Humanities, Art, and Creative Writing in Hampton Roads since 1989, and is currently an adjunct professor in the English department at ODU. He lives on the Middle Peninsula.

Richard Liese writes and teaches outside Ithaca, NY. A Perry Morgan Fellow from Old Dominion University’s MFA program, and recipient of the David Scott Sutelan Memorial Scholarship, his fiction and poetry is featured in numerous publications. His debut novel, Being Dead, was published fall 2023.

Scott Maclanahan is the author of Crapalachia, The Sarah Book, Fights!, and the Stories of Scott McClanahan. He lives in West Virginia.

Michael Patrick Pearson was, for many years, a professor of creative writing and literature in Virginia. He has published essays and reviews in The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Southern Literary Journal, Shenandoah Review, Chautauqua, The Morning News, Creative Nonfiction, The New York Journal of Books, and others. He is the author of many books – among them Imagined Places: Journeys into Literary America (1991, a New York Times Notable Book), Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx (1999), Shohola Falls (2003), and Innocents Abroad Too (2008). His new book, about the nature of pilgrimage in the modern world, The Road to Croagh Patrick, follows his journeys in America and Europe. Willie Morris, the former editor of Harper’s Magazine, said, “Michael Pearson is one of our nation’s finest memoirists.”

Luz Schweig (she/her/ella) is the editor of the award-winning Somos Xicanas anthology which sparked a revival of published work by Xicana/Mexican American women. Her poetry collection The Half That Runs (Mouthfeel Press, March 2026), was selected by Juan Felipe Herrera as first runner-up for the 2024 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Luz was raised in Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and now lives by the Powhatan River, on occupied Tsenacommacah territory.

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D., is the author of three books: Big Girl, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize and the Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel; The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora, winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the MLA; and the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love, winner of the Judith Markowitz Award from Lambda Literary. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University, and a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College. Mecca is Professor of English at Georgetown University, where she teaches courses in African American poetry and poetics, Black queer and feminist literatures, and creative writing. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Caleb True is a writer, editor, critic, musician, and podcaster. He holds an MA in History from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA in Creative Writing from Old Dominion University. He is the author of the novel RAÑA(University of Tampa Press, forthcoming Fall 2026), On Ruben Slikk: A Manifesto on the Purpose of Art and the Value of Transgression (Dynamo Verlag, 2024), and Chansons Russes (Quetzalcoatl, 2016), a historical triptych of stories set in Soviet Russia. He has published short stories and essays in the  Sonora Review, Faultline, Yemassee, Whiskey Island, and many others. He is the founder and managing editor of Dynamo Verlag (est. 2015), a boutique publishing house specializing in textual work demonstrating genius, eclecticism, and originality.

Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth is Director and Curator of the Gordon Art Galleries at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. His work has appeared in publications of the Smithsonian Institution, The American Anthropological Association, The American Folklore Society, The University of Illinois Press, The University of Indiana Press, West Virginia University Press, and Cambridge University. His 2023 book Finding the Singing Spruce: Musical Instrument Makers and Appalachia's Mountain Forests (West Virginia University Press) was a finalist for the Weatherford Book Award for Best Nonfiction book about Appalachia.

Lesley Wheeler, Poetry Editor of Shenandoah, is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Mycocosmic, which appeared on Lit Hub’s list of Notable Indie Books of 2025. Her other books include the hybrid memoir Poetry’s Possible Worlds and the novel Unbecoming. Wheeler’s work has received support from the Fulbright Foundation, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers, and the Sewanee Writers Workshop; their poems and essays have appeared in Poets & Writers, Orion, Poetry, Ecotone, and Massachusetts Review. She teaches in Lexington, Virginia.

Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda served as Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2006-2008. She has co-edited three anthologies, co-authored a poem-play, and published nine books of poetry, including The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, winner of the international Art in Literature: The Mary Lynn Kotz Award. She is the recipient of five grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and has won the Ellen Anderson Award, a Virginia Cultural Laureate Award, multiple first place awards from the Chesapeake Bay Branch of the National League of American Pen Women, a resolution of appreciation from the Virginia Board of Education for her service as poet laureate, an Edgar Allan Poe Poetry Award, six Pushcart Prize nominations, as well as other awards. Her poems, along with those of other Virginia poets laureate, are featured in two permanent art installations in Northern Virginia as part of the Washington Metropolitan Area Authority, Art in Transit. Her poem, “In the Comfort of Light,” is included in The Polaris Anthology, which landed on the Moon on March 2, 2025 on the Firefly Blue Ghost Lunar Lander.