UND Writers Conference

Since 1970, the University of North Dakota has hosted an annual writers conference, and some of the most influential writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have traveled to Grand Forks to participate. Nobel laureates Joseph Brodsky, Czesław Miłosz, and Derek Walcott have appeared at the conference. Thirty-five Pulitzer Prize winners have also graced UND’s halls since 1970, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Tony Kushner, Art Spiegelman, N. Scott Momaday, August Wilson, Alice Walker, Colson Whitehead, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, among others. Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, Maxine Hong Kingston, John Barth, Truman Capote, Allen Ginsberg, Ntozake Shange, Tim O’Brien, Eudora Welty, Salman Rushdie, Dorothy Allison, Marlon James, Layli Long Soldier, and Roxane Gay are exemplary of our conference alumni.

Beginning around 2007, we've also worked to include visual artists in our yearly line up, such as Peter Kuper, Mario Ybarra, Jr., Alexandra Grant, Sarah Leavitt, Allison Leigh Holt, Nicholas Galanin, and more.

The Chester Fritz Library Department of Special Collections plans to digitize the recorded readings, panel sessions, and lectures of these conferences. Currently, there are approximately 130 hours of footage online with more added as it becomes available.

The very earliest conferences (1970, 1973) were recorded in audio only. Unfortunately, there is no known extant footage for 1971 or 1972 and very limited footage from 1973.

Please Note: All of the materials in this collection are subject to copyright. They are being made freely available here for scholarly, educational, and historical purposes only. They may not downloaded or distributed, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of the various copyright holders and the University of North Dakota. All recordings and transcripts are housed on UND servers, with this collection providing only metadata and streaming access. If you have questions concerning copyright or would like to use request additional use of the materials, please contact Dr. Crystal Alberts, Director, UND Writers Conference.

This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.