23rd Annual Literary Festival at ODU: October 2-6, 2000

A New World

The first Old Dominion University Literary Festival of this century, of this millennium, will be one of the most exciting ones we've ever had-a showcase for original and mesmerizing writers who represent the fullness and diversity of contemporary American literature. Our "new world" will feature dramatists and poets, nonfiction writers and novelists, writers of hypertext and photojournalists, newly emerging MFA students and Pulitzer Prize winners. Three of the most important names in contemporary American fiction-Tim O'Brien, Steven Millhauser, and Ernest Gaines- will be here.

Old Dominion's 23rd Annual Literary Festival is about new worlds. Whether it be in sonnet form or in cyberspace, true literature is always a new world, struggling with themes that have haunted us in the darkness of the cave or the shadow of the spaceship. The writers who will participate in this year's Festival all trace the path between illusion and reality, allowing us to imagine more deeply and awake to more complex possibilities for the future.

As Shakespeare said, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." With us this week are the makers of dreams, mythmakers, truth tellers, writers who will bring us to a profound wakefulness.

~ Michael Pearson, Festival Director