Featuring readings, workshops, a film screening and an anthology launch, the 49th Annual Old Dominion University Literary Festival, “Make Room for Wonder,” runs Sunday through Thursday, Oct. 8, on campus and at other Norfolk locations.
It will showcase headliners such as MacArthur Fellow Hanif Abdurraqib, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for “There’s Always This Year” and the 2026 Weston International Award for career achievement in literary nonfiction. Abdurraqib is also the MFA Creative Writing Program’s Edith and Forrest P. White Writer in Residence.
Festival directors John McManus and Michael Weber said in a news release that the festival is dedicated to the memory of Renee Good.
Good was an ODU graduate who was killed in January by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Officer in Minneapolis. The title of the festival is drawn from her poem, "On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs," which won the 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize at ODU.
Other highlights of the festival include:
- Chris Adrian, a doctor who graduated from Eastern Virginia Medical School, is the author of “The Children’s Hospital” and “The Great Night”; he will do a reading at Lester Hall and lead a workshop on narrative medicine.
- Siobhan Fallon, whose story collection “You Know When the Men Are Gone” won the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction and follows the wives of soldiers at Fort Hood through their husbands’ deployments. Fallon, an Army spouse, will read at The Slover Library in downtown Norfolk.
- Scott McClanahan, author of “Crapalachia” and “The Sarah Book.”
- Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, whose novel “Big Girl” was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, will lead a conversation on craft and give the festival’s closing reading.
- Three poets featured in the Virginia Poets Database, an archive of state poets created by Professor Luisa A. Igloria, the 20th poet laureate of Virginia, will read at the university’s Perry Library, which turns 50 this year: Lesley Wheeler, poetry editor of “Shenandoah”; Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, poet laureate of Virginia 2006-2008; and Luz Schweig, editor of the anthology “Somos Xicanas.” Igloria will also teach a workshop in Coptic bookbinding.
- The Baron and Ellin Gordon Art Galleries will host a curator’s tour of the exhibition “Bread + Puppet Theater: Sculpture in Action” with Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, the galleries’ director and curator.
- Naro Video @ ODU Libraries will screen “Once” at The Slover Library.
- Another feature, “Room to Wonder,” is a literary-themed game jam hosted by the Monarch Institute for Game Design and Development. Participants will have two weeks to design story-based games.
- The Perry Library will also host a launch party for two anthologies, "Brackish Waters" and "Constellate."
All events are free and open to the public. Visit odu.edu for the schedule and more information.