28th ASU Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton
March 6 - 7, 2025
The 2025 conference will commemorate the 28th Angelo State University Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton. Our two-day conference is one of the few in the state that requires no registration or attendance fees for presenters and guests.
Featured Writer: Jenny Browne
We are pleased to announce this year’s featured writer is critically acclaimed poet Jenny Browne.
A former James Michener Fellow at the University of Texas-Austin, she has received the Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry and two U.S./U.K. Fullbright Fellowships to the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Her poems and essays have appeared widely, most recently in American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, Oxford American, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Magazine, The Nation and The New York Times. She served concurrent terms as the 2016-18 City of San Antonio Poet Laureate, and the 2017 State of Texas Poet Laureate. In 2023, she was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.

Schedule
Browne will give two presentations on Thursday, March 6, 2025, in the C.J. Davidson Conference Center.
The ASU Writers Conference brings award-winning authors from all genres to campus to share their works and their creativity with the ASU community and the public. Featured speakers have included renowned authors, such as Manuel Muñoz, Brandon Hobson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Craig Johnson, Leslie Marmon Silko, Art Spiegelman and Tim O’Brien.
Invitation to Submit
- Writers are encouraged to apply for 15-minute reading slots.
- Deadline for submission is Nov. 1, 2024.
- Notification by Dec. 1, 2024.
Submission Guidelines
- Submit a sample (10 pages or less) of poetry, fiction or creative nonfiction. Attach your work as a single file in either .docx or .pdf format.
- Please also attach a cover letter that includes a brief biography and the genre in which you’re submitting.
- Submit entries to writers-conference@angelo.edu.
The conference is held every year in honor of the late Elmer Kelton, who wrote more than 40 books, including “The Time it Never Rained,” “The Man Who Rode Midnight” and “The Good Old Boys.” He was a seven-time winner of the Western Writers of America’s (WWA) Spur Award, and the WWA named him the “all-time best Western author.” Additionally, local and regional writers are invited to showcase their works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and prose. The event is hosted by the Natalie Zan Ryan Department of English and Modern Languages and sponsored by the university with support from the ASU Alumni Association, the College of Arts and Humanities, and Guy and Eva Choate.

Donate
Help support and enhance the Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton with a tax-deductible gift to its endowment.
For more information, contact the Office of Development at 325-942-2116 or development@angelo.edu.
Questions? Contact Us!
For questions or inquiries, please contact Dr. Daniel Kennedy, Writers Conference chair, at writers-conference@angelo.edu.
Help support and enhance the Writers Conference in Honor of Elmer Kelton with a tax-deductible gift to its endowment. For more information, contact the Office of Development at 325-942-2116 or development@angelo.edu.