The Naslund-Mann School invites MFA alumni who graduated in writing for children and young adults to submit proposals for a fifty-minute-long plenary craft lecture in the area of W4CYA. The lecture will be presented at the Spring 2025 residency, May 24-31. The deadline for proposals is February 18.
Alumni may propose to lecture on craft or on an important figure or school of writing in the featured area. The best proposals will focus on distinct concerns of Writing for Children and Young Adults but present information that will be useful to writers of all genres. While the lecture may engage the audience with exercises, at least forty minutes of the fifty should be presented in lecture form.
Each proposal should include the alum’s name, the lecture title, a description (at least 150 and no more than 200 words) to be included in the Residency Lecture Descriptions document, as well as the thesis of the lecture, a rough outline of the lecture, and the goals of the lecture, describing the main takeaways for the audience.
We encourage alumni to revisit their ECEs, graduation lectures, or topics for their small group discussions for possible subjects.
Each semester, the chair and directors, with faculty input, choose one lecture to be presented as part of the Distinguished MFA Alumni Lecture series at the upcoming residency on Spalding’s campus. The selected lecturer will present a fifty-minute plenary lecture and be compensated with a $500 honorarium, a one-night stay at The Brown Hotel, and travel expenses to and from residency.
This lecture will be open to the community as well as to students and faculty at the residency in Louisville.
The lecture proposals are due no later than the midsession deadline of the previous fall or spring semester. Forthcoming deadlines:
Spring 2025: W4CYA, proposal deadline February 18, 2025.
Fall 2025: Writing for TV, Screen, and Stage, proposal deadline August 18, 2025.
Spring 2026: Fiction, proposal deadline February 18, 2026.
Fall 2026: Poetry, proposal deadline August 18, 2026.
Spring 2027: Creative Nonfiction, proposal deadline February 18, 2027.
To submit a proposal for a writing for children and young adults lecture to be presented at the Spring 2025 residency in May, email your proposal to the Naslund-Mann School of Writing with the subject line “last name, first name, SPRING 2025 Alumni Lecture Proposal.”
We hope to award the Writing for Children and Young Adults Distinguished Alumni Lectureship for Spring 2025 no later than March 15.
For more information, please contact Kathleen Driskell, chair, Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing.