The University of Tennessee at Martin’s Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages will host the annual Young Writers Conference from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 13, in the Boling University Center on the UT Martin campus.
The conference is designed for students in grades 8-12 with a registration fee of $10 per student; registration is free for participating teachers. The deadline to register and pay the conference fee is Monday, Nov. 9. Fees can be paid at www.tinyurl.com/utmartinywc.
The keynote speaker for this year’s Young Writers Conference is Vic Sizemore. He teaches at Pellissippi State Community College near Knoxville, and is the author of the 2025 Tennessee Book Award-winning novel “God of River Mud” as well as an essay collection (“Goodbye, My Tribe”) and a short-story collection (“I Love You I’m Leaving”). He has also published nonfiction pieces in Story Quarterly, North American Review, Southern Humanities Review and other journals.
Sizemore’s literary science fiction novel “The Unborn Simone Gordon” is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in spring 2028. It will be the inaugural title in their House of Kel imprint.
Students will have the opportunity to attend hands-on workshops in writing poetry, fiction and nonfiction, songwriting, literary analysis and professional story of self. Teachers may attend the workshops alongside their students.
Dr. Maari Carter, assistant professor of English, is one of many UT Martin faculty members and visiting writers participating in the Young Writers Conference
“The Young Writers Conference is vital to the region; it provides high school students from across West Tennessee the opportunity to meet fellow creatives, engage with craft and technique in a collaborative workshop setting and hear from prominent writers on how to navigate today’s literary marketplace,” she said. “Ultimately, the goal of the conference is to empower the next generation of writers by providing a space where their voices can flourish.”
The UT Martin Young Writers Conference was first held in 2006 and has continued annually each year except 2020, marking its 20th year in 2026. This one-day conference features a luncheon, keynote address and an open-mic reading for students, and includes a series of writing workshops taught by UT Martin faculty and visiting writers.
For more information about the UT Martin Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages, visit www.utm.edu/emfl or contact Department Chair Dr. Jeffery Longacre at jlongac1@utm.edu or 731-881-7300.
For more information about UT Martin, visit www.utm.edu or call 731-881-7000.
PHOTO: Vic Sizemore, author of the 2025 Tennessee Book Award-winning novel “God of River Mud” as well as an essay collection (“Goodbye, My Tribe”) and a short-story collection (“I Love You I’m Leaving”), will be the guest speaker at the 2026 Young Writers Conference on Nov. 13 at UT Martin.
