Literary non profit organization Punch Bucket Lit will present its inaugural literary festival Friday and Saturday September 20-21, 2024. Held at The Wortham Center for Performing Arts and The Renaissance Hotel in downtown Asheville, the festival will feature over 100 authors, including New York Times bestselling and three-time National Book Award-nominated author, Lauren Groff. Readings, workshops, and panels will cover multiple genres and forms, including memoir, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. An all-day bookfair will host 20+ literary magazines and presses including The Sun Magazine, Ecotone, The Rumpus, and Loblolly Press.
Punch Bucket Lit’s executive director and founder, Rachel M. Hanson, explains that “The festival is committed to fostering a diverse national perspective while building up and giving back to the local community on which it is built.”
The festival will begin September 20th with a Friday night rapid reading at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts that will feature a succession of five-minute prose and poetry performances by renowned authors Leah Hampton, Halle Hill, Bryn Chancellor, Ye Chun, and poets, Jessica Jacobs, Meg Day, Melissa Crowe, Evelyn Berry and many more.
Saturday offerings include robust selection of prose and poetry readings, literary panels, and workshops from 8:30AM-5:15PM in both the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts and The Renaissance Hotel. The bookfair will run from 9:00AM - 5:00PM also held in the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts.
Saturday Night’s keynote event will begin with three award-winning poets: Diamond Forde and Jóse Olivarez in conversation with Eric Tran. Next will be the festival’s main headlining event, Lauren Groff (one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024) in conversation with renowned memoirist and novelist, Tessa Fontaine.
“Punch Bucket Lit has created a space for all of us,” says Diamond Forde, “—to fellowship, to frolic, to love the literary work we do, and I’m excited to be a part of it, to be amongst so many phenomenal speakers and events right here in my own backyard. This is truly special.”
Programming includes panels such as “Thinking with the Climate Crisis,” “DIY Writing Careers,” and workshops such as “Putting the Flash in Flash Fiction,” “Intimacy with Strangeness,” “Queerness and the Spirit: Writing Memoir,” “Writing Intergenerational Trauma,” “Dreams and the Work of Poetry” and more.
Authors’ books will be available for purchase during the festival and will be provided by Malaprop’s Bookstore. The festival is supported by ArtsAVL, Explore Asheville, Blue Ridge Public Radio, rEvolve Mercantile, Sugar Hollow Solar, and Champion Credit Union.
For more information about Punch Bucket Literary Festival visit punchbucketlit.org or email Alex McWalters, Outreach Director, at amcwalters@punchbucketlit.org.
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Nonprofit Punch Bucket Lit announces inaugural Punch Bucket Literary Festival
Literary non profit organization Punch Bucket Lit will present its inaugural literary festival Friday and Saturday September 20-21, 2024.