Literary Festivals Go Virtual

In the time of COVID-19 and social distancing, literary organizations face a difficult reality regarding in-person festivals and conferences. Dozens of events previously scheduled for the summer of 2020, some years in the making, have been canceled or postponed—events that typically bring together hundreds and thousands of readers, writers, and literary enthusiasts. The Squaw Valley Writers Workshops were slated to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary in July and will postpone most programming until 2021, and as of this writing the ninety-fifth Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, tentatively scheduled for August, has yet to announce if it will proceed.

But as stay-at-home orders swept the United States this spring, many organizers felt a more pressing need for community connection than ever before and