48th Annual Literary Festival at ODU: October 5-10, 2025

Suspend Your Disbelief

Literature traps ideas in amber, preserving them to reawaken in future minds. This ancient technology, as potent as magic, requires no power source or machinery—only the willingness of readers to suspend disbelief. The act of surrender unlocks worlds, conjuring dreams, binding us to the shared human project of imagining what might be. The 48th Annual Old Dominion University Literary Festival honors this leap of faith. To suspend disbelief is to trust the artist, to let the boundary between reality and imagination blur until the written word is a vessel of wisdom and marvel. From Sun 5 Oct to Fri 10 Oct, join us in celebrating a timeless craft that is the inheritance of all of us.

~ John McManus and Marianne Chan, 2024 Festival Co-directors

Cover image: Sarah R. Glaser, 2025, Isle of Dreams