The Flint Festival of Writers – formerly the Flint Literary Festival – is an annual, free event in partnership with Gothic Funk Press, East Village Magazine, and The University of Michigan — Flint English Department.
Featuring readings from both locally and nationally renowned writers and authors, engaging panels and workshops, and a carefully-curated book fair, our mission is to support the literary tradition and writing done in and about Flint and cultivate dynamic resources and experiences for Flint writers and readers.
Festival Board
Bob Campbell is a writer based in Flint, Mich. His creative nonfiction and essays have appeared in Belt Magazine, Forge Literary Magazine and Gravel Magazine. He is a contributor to Belt Publishing’s Midwest Architecture Journeys, coming in September 2019. Bob was a staff writer for the Flint Journal, Lexington Herald-Leader and Detroit Free Press. He was also an electrician at AC Spark Plug, before moving into journalism. His debut novel, Motown Man, will be published this fall 2019 by Urban Farmhouse Press.
Sarah Carson is the author of the poetry collections Poems in which You Die and Buick City. Her poetry and other writing have appeared in Diagram, Guernica, the Minnesota Review, the Nashville Review and New Ohio Review, among others.
Connor Coyne is a writer living and working in Flint, Michigan. The first volume of his new serial novel Urbantasm is winner of the 2019 Indie Book Awards prize for Young New Adult. Coyne’s other work includes his novels Hungry Rats and Shattering Glass and a short story collection titled Atlas. His work has been published by Picador, Vox.com, Belt Magazine, Santa Clara Review, and others. He earned his Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the New School, and maintains websites at Urbantasm.com and ConnorCoyne.com.
Katie Curnow works in marketing and wrote some things once. Her work can be found in a handful of zines and college publications lost beneath beds and in boxes of old sweatshirts. She also has work in a Belt Publishing anthology and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.
James Schirmer is Associate Professor and Chair of English at the University of Michigan-Flint. His research and teaching interests include first-year composition, technical communication, and the history of rhetoric. He is proud to support and advocate for community/university efforts and events like the Flint Festival of Writers.
Jan Worth-Nelson has been editor of East Village Magazine, a venerable community journalism monthly featured on Michigan Radio and in Columbia Journalism Review, since 2015. Retired from 26 years as a writing teacher and administrator at the UM – Flint, Worth has been published widely, including recently in Belt Magazine, Gravel, Nice Cage, the MacGuffin, Midwestern Gothic, Exposition Review and others. A former Peace Corps volunteer, she is the author of the novel Night Blind based on that experience. A resident of Flint since 1981, she is not quite a Flint native but seems to have imbibed its quirks. complications and the ongoing absorptions of its heartbreaks and beauty.