Vermont Business Magazine The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the oldest writers’ conference in the country, will hold its 99th session starting Wednesday, August 14, and running through Saturday, August 24. Held every summer since 1926 on Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus in Ripton, the conference remains one of America’s most respected literary institutions.
Ten days of workshops, lectures, classes, and readings provide writers with rigorous practical and theoretical approaches to their craft. The mountain campus has attracted many renowned authors and poets such as Robert Frost, Carson McCullers, John Irving, Terry Tempest Williams, Ted Conover, and Julia Alvarez.
Conference lectures and readings take place daily and are free and open to the public. 
Garth Greenwell
Writer Garth Greenwell, a member of the conference faculty, will offer a lecture titled “Saying Yes to Life: On James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room” on Wednesday, August 21, at 9 a.m. and a reading with Helen Schulman on Friday, August 23, at 8:15 p.m. Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for many other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the LA Times Book Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. His second book, Cleanness, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and the Prix Sade, among others. A New York Times Notable Book, it was named a Best Book of 2020 by over thirty publications. A new novel, Small Rain, is forthcoming in September 2024. A 2020 Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the 2021 Vursell Award for prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he is currently a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.
Rebecca Makkai
Other faculty include Rebecca Makkai and Adrian Matejka. Makkai is the author of this year’s New York Times bestselling I Have Some Questions for You, as well as the novels The Great Believers, The Borrower, The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime. The Great Believers was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it received the ALA Carnegie Medal and the LA Times Book Prize among other honors. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Makkai teaches graduate fiction writing at Northwestern University and Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English; and she is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. She lives in Chicago and Vermont.
Adrian Matejka
Matejka is the author of The Devil’s Garden (2003) which won the New York / New England Award and Mixology (2009), a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series. His third book, The Big Smoke (2013), was awarded the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. The Big Smoke was also a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, the National Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Map to the Stars, was published by Penguin in 2017. His mixed-media collaboration with Nicholas Galanin and Kevin Neireiter inspired by Funkadelic, Standing on the Verge & Maggot Brain, was published in 2021. His most recent collection of poems, Somebody Else Sold the World (2021), was a finalist for the UNT 2022 Rilke Prize and the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. His first graphic novel Last On His Feet: Jack Johnson and the Battle of the Century was published in February 2023 by Liveright. Among Matejka’s other honors are fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and a Simon Fellowship from United States Artists. He served as Poet Laureate of the state of Indiana in 2018-19 and is Editor of Poetry magazine. Matejka will offer a reading with Paul Lisicky on Saturday, August 17, at 8:15 p.m. Makkai will offer a reading with Rick Barot on August 19, at 8:15 p.m. and offer a lecture titled “Can’t Go Over It, Can’t Go Under It” on Friday, August 23, at 9 a.m.
Xochitl Gonzalez
“What makes Bread Loaf exciting is its ability to serve as a source of encouragement to writers in their more formative years,” said Jennifer Grotz, director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences, including the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in August and also the Environmental Writers’ Conference and the Translators’ Conference that take place concurrently in June. “The talent of the experienced writers on our faculty, the stunning setting, and the conference’s history combine to inspire budding poets and authors as they find their voices and work on their craft of poetry, fiction, or nonfiction.”
This year, more than 260 writers, students, faculty, literary agents, and editors will gather to participate in the conference. The general public is invited to attend a daily schedule of free readings and lectures that take place in the Little Theater, located on the Bread Loaf campus on Route 125.
The 2024 series of public events will begin on Wednesday, August 14, at 8:15 p.m., with a welcome by Middlebury President Laurie L. Patton and Grotz, who is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Still Falling, as well as Window Left Open, The Needle, and Cusp. Also a translator, she’s published two books of translations from the French: Psalms of All My Days by Patrice de La Tour du Pin, and Rochester Knockings, by Tunisian-born novelist Hubert Haddad. Her co-translations with Piotr Sommer from the Polish of Jerzy Ficowski’s Everything I Don’t Know received the PEN America Best Translated Book of Poetry Award in 2022. After Grotz’s opening remarks, Special Guest Xochitl Gonzalez will read from her work. Gonzalez is the New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming. Named a Best of 2022 by the New York Times, TIME, Kirkus, Washington Post, and NPR, Olga Dies Dreaming was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize in Fiction and The New York City Book Awards. Her new novel is Anita de Monte Laughs Last (Flatiron Books). As a staff writer for The Atlantic, she was recognized as a 2023 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Commentary. A native Brooklynite and proud public school graduate, Gonzalez holds a BA from Brown University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Later in the conference, on Sunday, August 18, at 4:15 p.m., Grotz will offer a reading with Lydi Conklin and Jesse Nathan.
For a complete schedule of lectures and readings, see the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Web page. Events are subject to change. Call to confirm dates and times at 802-443-5286 through August 13; 802-443-2700 after August 14.
The Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences include the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, designed for those who want to bring more depth of knowledge to their writing about the environment, and the Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, which highlights the important role that literary translators of poetry and prose play in the United States and beyond.
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