The Merced 2024 LitFest Needs You, Your Voice, Your Vision!
We are seeking writers to submit proposals for public readings for our first annual Merced LitFest, to be held September 14 from 12:00-5:00 p.m. in downtown Merced. Our LitFest will celebrate the multi-layered voices of writers who can express some connection (long-standing or very recent, pleasant or otherwise) to California.
We want the sometime slam poet, the occasional crime story writer, the once-in -a-while nature-loving memoirist. We hope to see proposals from writers who like to experiment and break rules, but we also look forward to showcasing writers who prefer a more traditional approach to literature. We are interested in hearing from seasoned writers and writers just beginning to explore their talents.
Our LitFest theme, We are California, is based on Poet Laureate Lee Herrick’s Our California project. Your work should address the LitFest theme in some way, but feel free to be imaginative and loose with your interpretation of what We are California means. We’re looking for the unexpected and expected, the quirky and traditional, the colorful and the monochrome, the light-suffused and the oppressively dark, and anything in-between.
Readers can participation by submitting a proposal for either a group reading or as an individual in need of a group. Guidelines are below:
Guidelines for Group Readings
Readers should team up in groups of 3-4, with one unifying idea related to the LitFest theme. Each group will have a maximum of forty-five minutes to share their work with an audience (please save at least 5 minutes for introduction). Proposals can be broken down into four easy steps:
- The Group Facilitator should click here to Submit a Group Proposal. Write the facilitator’s name and email address on lines 1& 2. (The facilitator can be any member of your group and does not need to be from California or affiliated with UC Merced.)
- Write the title of your reading. Any title is okay with us. Be creative or straightforward, funny or serious, transparent or opaque. Some example titles are: Vultures of the San Joaquin, Only the Best Dogs Eat Poppies, All the Girls Named Sierra— you get the idea. Loose translations on the theme are more than okay.
- In fewer than 100 words, describe your event. The Vultures of California event might be described as follows: We will read selections in which California condors, turkey buzzards, and human vultures will be predominately featured or obliquely referenced.
- Give us the names and brief (no more than 50 words) biographies of your group’s members. (Members do not need to be affiliated with UC Merced.)
Guidelines for Individuals Readers
If you you would like to read your original work, but do not have a group, we’ve got you covered. Submit an individual proposal and we’ll schedule you with 2-3 other writers who also submitted individual proposals. Click here to Submit a Individual Proposal.
And don’t forget to click Submit! We’ll notify you in mid to late June if your proposal is accepted.
