Nonfiction Fest

Venture into the dynamic world of nonfiction with Elissa Bassist, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Erika Krouse, Anna Qu, and more at Lighthouse’s Nonfiction Fest!

We’ve packed this weekend-long mini-festival with classes, readings, panels, seminars, and more—each exploring a different avenue of nonfiction. From true crime to memoir, lyric essay to journalism, Nonfiction Fest has something for every kind of nonfiction writer (even the nonfiction newbie!). Here’s your chance to grow your writing community, learn from a range of experts, and dig into the questions unique to writers of memoir and nonfiction: What counts as “true”? How can we write about real people and difficult topics in meaningful, ethical ways? Where are the lines between journalism and creative nonfiction, or autofiction and memoir? And how does research and reporting fit into the picture?

Morning craft seminars cover investigative reporting with Natalie Lampert to speculative nonfiction with Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, while post-lunch panels focus on publishing and new horizons in nonfiction. In the afternoons, enjoy craft talks with Erika Krouse and Elissa Bassist, followed by evening events like an onstage conversation between writers Elisa Gabbert and John Cotter and a round of “speed-dating” with nonfiction editors at a variety of Colorado-based lit mags and small presses.