Our new lecture series is designed to bring you the wisdom of acclaimed writers, sharing the tricks, tips and insight of the trade. Each lecture will include a craft talk, writing tools you can practice at home, and an intimate q&a with the author.
Sign Up for Our Literary Masters Lecture Series
Monday(s), February 16 & 23, 2026, from 6:30 – 8:00 pm CT online via Zoom.
Creating an Immersive Setting and Atmosphere with Andrew Porter
In this two-part intensive lecture, award-winning fiction author Andrew Porter will share practical techniques for building immersive settings and atmospheres, explore their vital role in fiction and nonfiction, and offer craft tools participants can practice on their own after the lecture.
Monday(s), March 23 & 30, 2026 from 6:30pm – 8:00 pm CT via Zoom
Old Drafts, New Writing: Turning Text into Graphic Literature with Octavio Quintanilla
In this two-part lecture, led by 2025 Texas Poet Octavio Quintanilla, we will explore how writers can use new and existing work to create graphic literature—a form that merges text with visual storytelling to evoke powerful, multidimensional pieces. Together, we will trace the history and evolution of the graphic form, from visual poetry, poetry comics, and illustrated memoirs to experimental hybrids that blur the line between image and word.
Meet the Masters
Andrew Porter is the author of four books, including the story collections The Disappeared (Knopf) and The Theory of Light and Matter (Vintage) and the novels In Between Days (Knopf) and The Imagined Life (Knopf, 2025). A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received a Pushcart Prize, a James Michener/Copernicus Fellowship, and the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, One Story, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, The Southern Review, and on Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. Currently, he teaches fiction writing and directs the creative writing program at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Octavio Quintanilla is the 2025 Texas Poet Laureate and the author of the poetry collections, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014), The Book of Wounded Sparrows (Texas Review Press, 2024), which was longlisted for the National Book Award, and Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours, winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets (University of Arizona Press, 2025). He is the founder and director of the literature & arts festival, VersoFrontera, publisher of Alabrava Press, and former Poet Laureate of San Antonio, TX.