Past Writers Conferences

Columbus State Community College's Writers Conference has featured an eclectic cross section of keynote speakers, who represent a wide array of genres, styles, and communities.

Featured here is a sampling of keynote speakers from the past several years:

2023 Writers Conference

Columbus State held its 20th annual Writers Conference on Saturday, April 15. The event featured a keynote by author Siaara Freeman, with additional workshops for writers. The event featured expert writers from multiple genres and included a book and community resource fair. The day wrapped up with sharing our work in an open mic style forum facilitated by The Poetry Cauldron, one of Columbus' newest poetry open mic nights.

2022 Writers Conference

Columbus State held its 18th annual writer’s conference on Saturday, April 30. The event featured a keynote by poet Chiwan Choi, with additional workshops for writers.

Writers Conference 2021: Making Space

Workshops to explore audiobooks, crafting kids’ books, comedy, fan fiction and more.

Featuring a keynote by Scott Woods, with additional workshops hosted by authors from Florida, Georgia and New York, writers explored various interpretations of the theme “Making Space.”

Writers Conference: 2019

16th Annual Writers Conference
Saturday, April 6, 2019
10:00 a.m.- 3:00 p.m.
Columbus State Community College
Workforce Development Center
315 Cleveland Avenue
Columbus, Ohio

Keynote Speaker: David Wanczyk

David Wanczyk published his first book Beep: Inside the Unseen World of Baseball for the Blind in 2018 (Swallow Press), and he has also placed essays, poetry, and criticism in magazines such as Slate, Boston Globe Magazine, Texas Monthly, Brevity, Pank, and Woolf Studies Annual. He is the editor of the literary journal New Ohio Review, an instructor at Ohio University, and the father of two young kids.

For more information, visit http://www.davidwanczyk.com

Writers Conference: 2018

15th Annual Writers Conference
Saturday, May 5, 2018
10:00 am-4:00 pm
Columbus State Community College
Columbus State Workforce Development Center
315 Cleveland Avenue
Columbus, Ohio

Keynote Speaker: Bianca Lynne Spriggs

Bianca Lynne Spriggs is an award-winning writer and multidisciplinary artist from Lexington, Kentucky. An Assistant Professor of English at Ohio University, Bianca is the author of four collections of poems, most recently Call Her by Her Name (Triquarterly Books, 2016) and The Galaxy Is a Dance Floor (Argos Books, 2016). She is the co-editor of three poetry anthologies, most recently Undead: Ghouls, Ghosts & More (Apex Publications, 2017) and Black Bone: 25 Years of the Affrilachian Poets (University of Kentucky Press, 2018).

For more information, visit https://www.ohio.edu/cas/spriggsb

Writers Conference: 2017

14th Annual Writers Conference
Saturday, May 6, 2017
9:00 am-4:00 pm
Columbus State Community College
Columbus State Workforce Development Center
315 Cleveland Avenue
Columbus, Ohio

Keynote Speaker: Maggie Smith

Maggie Smith is the author of Keep Moving (Simon & Schuster, 2020), Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017), The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press, 2015), Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press, 2005), and three prizewinning chapbooks. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Smith is a freelance writer and editor.

For more information, visit https://maggiesmithpoet.com/

Writers Conference: 2016

13th Annual Writers Conference
Saturday, April 23, 2016
9:00 am-5:00 pm
Columbus State Community College
Columbus State Workforce Development Center
315 Cleveland Avenue
Columbus, Ohio

Keynote Speaker: Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He released Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest with University of Texas press in February 2019. The book became a New York Times Bestseller, and was met with critical acclaim. His second collection of poems, A Fortune For Your Disaster, is being released by Tin House Books in September 2019.

For more information, visit http://www.abdurraqib.com/

Writers Conference: 2015

12th Annual Writers Conference
Saturday, May 2, 2015
9:00 am-5:00 pm
Columbus State Community College
Workforce Development Center
315 Cleveland Avenue
Columbus, Ohio

Keynote Speaker: Jaswinder Bolina

Jaswinder Bolina is an American poet and essayist. His new book of poems The 44th of July is forthcoming from Omnidawn Publishing in April 2019. His previous collections include Phantom Camera (winner of the 2012 Green Rose Prize in Poetry from New Issues Press), Carrier Wave (winner of the 2006 Colorado Prize for Poetry from the Center for Literary Publishing at Colorado State University), and the digital chapbook The Tallest Building in America (Floating Wolf Quarterly 2014). An international edition of Phantom Camera is available from Hachette India. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and been included in The Best American Poetry series.

His essays can be found at The Poetry Foundation, McSweeney’s, Himal Southasian, The Writer, and other magazines. They have also appeared in anthologies including the 14th edition of The Norton Reader (W.W. Norton & Company 2016), Language: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press 2013), and Poets on Teaching (University of Iowa Press 2011).

He teaches on the faculty of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing at the University of Miami.

For more information, visit http://www.jaswinderbolina.com/

Writers Conference: 2014

11th Annual Writers Conference
Saturday, April 26, 2014
8:30 am-4:00 pm
Columbus State Community College
Workforce Development Center
315 Cleveland Avenue
Columbus, Ohio

Keynote Speaker: Roxane Gay

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, the New York Times bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women and the New York Times bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. She has several books forthcoming and is also at work on television and film projects.

For more information, visit http://www.roxanegay.com/