LONGLEAF WRITERS CONFERENCE

Rebecca Makkai’s latest novel, I HAVE SOME QUESTIONS FOR YOU, was released in February 2023 from Viking. Her last novel, THE GREAT BELIEVERS, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the LA Times Book Prize; and it was one of the New York Times’ Ten Best Books of 2018. Her other books are the novels THE BORROWER and THE HUNDRED-YEAR HOUSE, and the collection MUSIC FOR WARTIME—four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of Sierra Nevada University and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director of StoryStudio Chicago. 

Michael Farris Smith is an award-winning writer whose novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Book Riot, and numerous others, and have been named Indie Next List, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has been a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, the Gold Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France, and his essays have appeared with The New York Times, Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun, and more. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.

Derrick Harriell is the Ottilie Schillig Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi where he directs the African American Studies program. His previous collections of poems include Stripper in Wonderland, Come Kingdom, Cotton, and Ropes, winner of the 2014 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Book Award. His short story, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” was the recipient of the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award. 

Erika Krouse is the author of three books, most recently Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation, which was a Book of the Month Club pick, a People Magazine Pick, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and has been optioned by Playground Entertainment for TV adaptation. Erika is also the author of Contenders (a novel) and Come Up and See Me Sometime (short stories). Erika’s short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, One Story, and other places. Erika teaches at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop and the Regis Mile High MFA program. 

January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and currently serves on the boards of AWP and Montserrat College of Art. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, Green Mountains Review, Poetry, and Sierra magazine, among others. Her poem, “At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial,” was a co-winner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry award from the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O’Neil was the 2019-2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She lives with her two children in Beverly, MA.

Wendy Rawlings grew up in New York and received her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Utah. Her most recent book, Time for Bed, was published by LSU press. Rawlsings also completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Colorado State University and is the recipient of residency fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Yaddo. Rawlings was awarded the John Farrar Fellowship in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Her teaching interests include: form and theory of fiction, short fiction by women, narrative voice in the American short story, and the comic novel. A collection of her short stories, Come Back Irish, won the 2000 Sandstone Prize for Short Fiction and was published in December 2001 by Ohio State University Press. Her novel, The Agnostics, won the Michigan Literary Award from the University of Michigan Press.

Alex Glass started Glass Literary Management in 2015 after an eighteen-year career in book publishing. For the previous thirteen years he was a literary agent at Trident Media Group, where he built a diverse list of successful authors. Prior to becoming an agent, Alex worked in marketing at the Putnam Berkley Publishing Group and spent three years in the literature program at the National Endowment for the Arts. His clients have won awards such as the PEN/O’Henry, the Edgar, and the Newbery. Alex has represented fifteen New York Times bestsellers and numerous other national and international bestsellers. Alex has been interviewed and quoted in publications like Publisher’s Weekly, the Wall Street Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Entertainment Weekly, which called him “an A-list agent.” He is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and the MFA program at American University. He lives in the New York City suburbs with his wife, Sarah, a book editor, and their daughters, Gabrielle and Vivienne.

Jade Wong-Baxter joined the Frances Goldin Literary Agency in 2021. She previously worked for three years at Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents as a junior agent and foreign rights associate. A graduate of Vassar College, Jade got her start in publishing at Writers House, W. W. Norton, and Folio Literary Management. Her clients include Chris Belcher (PRETTY BABY, Avid Reader, 2022); Delia Cai (CENTRAL PLACES, Ballantine, 2023); and Hannah Matthews (YOU OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE, Atria, 2023). Jade is looking for adult literary/upmarket fiction and narrative nonfiction, with an emphasis on narratives by and about people of color, as well as the perspectives of marginalized identities. Her other areas of interest include magical realism, memoir, cultural criticism, and Asian-American history.

Creative Director

MATT BONDURANT’s latest novel, Oleander City, was published in 2022 and his previous book, The Night Swimmer, was featured in the New York Times Book Review, Outside Magazine, and The Daily Beast, among others. His second novel The Wettest County in the World (2008) was a New York Times Editor’s Pick, a San Francisco Chronicle Best 50 Books of the Year, an international bestseller, and has been made into a feature film (Lawless) by Director John Hillcoat, starring Shia Labeouf, Tom Hardy, Jessica Chastain, Mia Wasikowska, Gary Oldman, and Guy Pearce. His first novel The Third Translation (2005) was an international bestseller, translated into 14 languages worldwide. His non-fiction work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Outside, The Dallas Morning News, The Guardian, and numerous other outlets.  Matt has sold multiple original drama TV pilots, including development deals with HBO/Cinemax, Red Wagon Entertainment, and Warner Brothers Television.

Executive Director

SETH BRADY TUCKER’s second book, (We Deserve the Gods We Ask For, won the Gival Press Poetry Award and went on to win the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His first book, (Mormon Boy), won the Elixir Press Editor’s Poetry Prize and was a Finalist for the Colorado Book Award. His fiction has won the Bevel Summers prize, and his new short story collection was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor prize. Recent publications in fiction, poetry, and essays appear in Litmag, Driftwood, December, Los Angeles Review, Memoir, Little Patuxent, Copper Nickel, and others. Seth is an alumnus of both Bread Loaf and Sewanee and has degrees from San Francisco State University, Northern Arizona University, and Florida State University (PhD), and he teaches poetry and fiction workshops at the Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop in Denver. He is an associate teaching professor at the Colorado School of Mines, is originally from Wyoming, and once served as an Army 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper.