Meet Our Writers

Join our visiting authors for an inviting two-day event
with readings and master classes!

Taylor Byas

Dr. Taylor Byas, Ph.D. (she/her) is a Black Chicago native currently living in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she is a Features Editor for The Rumpus, and a Poetry Acquisitions Editor for Variant Literature, and an Editorial Advisor for Jackleg Press. She is the 1st place winner of the 2020 Poetry Super Highway Contest, the 2020 Frontier Poetry Award for New Poets Contest, and the 2021 Adrienne Rich Poetry Prize. She is the author of the chapbook Bloodwarm from Variant Literature, a second chapbook, Shutter, from Madhouse Press, and her debut full-length, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, from Soft Skull Press. She is also a co-editor of The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol X: Alabama from Texas Review Press, and of Poemhood: Our Black Revival, a YA anthology on Black folklore from HarperCollins. She is represented by Rena Rossner of the Deborah Harris Agency.

Kerry Jones

Kerry Jones was born in the coal regions of eastern Pennsylvania and grew up in the Lehigh Valley. She attended Mansfield University and Temple University, and received her MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University, where she is now Teaching Professor of English. Her fiction has appeared in many literary journals, including Alaska Quarterly ReviewSycamore ReviewBryant Literary ReviewSeems, and SLAB. Her work has received the Richard Yates Award, a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and she has been a runner-up for the Wabash Prize, the Boggs Fiction Contest, the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award, and a several-times finalist for the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize. Her collection The Last Innocent Year received the 2021 Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and was published by Southeast Missouri State University Press in September 2022. She lives in Wichita, Kansas, with her husband and their family of four-legged friends.

Past Festival Writers

March 30
Sub Label
1991

Mark Strand
Judith Hemschmeyer

March 30
Sub Label
1992

Billy Collins
W.P. Kinsella

March 30
Sub Label
1993

Robin Hemley
Henry Taylor

March 30
Sub Label
1994

Lucien Stryk
Sapphire

March 30
Sub Label
1995

William Hathaway
Michael Martone

March 30
Sub Label
1996

William Heyen
Jonis Agee

March 30
Sub Label
2004

Tom Montag
Paul Zimmer

March 30
Sub Label
2005

Beth Ann Fennelly
Larry Watson

March 30
Sub Label
2006

Marilyn Taylor
Sebastian Matthews

March 30
Sub Label
2007

Philip Dacey
Margaret Dawe

March 30
Sub Label
2008

Tom Franklin
Linda Aschbrenner

March 30
Sub Label
2009

David Lehman
Stacey Harwood

March 30
Sub Label
2010

Michael Kriesel
Shannon Kring Buset

March 30
Sub Label
2011

Joyce Dyer
Hailey Leithauser

March 30
Sub Label
2012

Matthew Henriksen
Dawn Hogue
Jean Kuehnel
Jodie Liedke

March 30
Sub Label
2013

Nick Lantz
Allyson Goldin Loomis

March 30
Sub Label
2014

David Jauss
Karla Huston

March 30
Sub Label
2015

A.E. Stallings
Nickolas Butler

March 30
Sub Label
2016

Joe Wilkins
David Steingass

March 30
Sub Label
2017

Kevin McFadden
Emily Ruskovich

March 30
Sub Label
2018

Barton Sutter
Christian Wiman

March 30
Sub Label
2019

Kathleen Heideman
Paul Hostovsky

March 30
Sub Label
2021

Ryan Ireland
Cathryn Cofell

March 30
Sub Label
2022

Anna Harris-Parker
Tony Woodlief

March 30
Sub Label
2023

Marianne Chan
Clancy McGilligan

Great Lakes Writers Festival

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