Literary Masters Lecture Series

Infuse your writing with stunning visual art

Monday(s), March 23 & 30, 6:30-8pm CT, via Zoom
Nonmember: $90; Member: $75; Student/Educ/Mil: $63
*EARN CPEs; TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

Join us for our second Literary Masters Lecture of the year and learn to transform your old writing into graphic literature! Each session features an engaging craft talk, actionable writing strategies, and a live Q&A with the author.

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.

This lecture is open to writers of all skill levels, 18+. 

Workshop participants will leave with the following:

• Models from authors and artists who successfully blend literature and visual art.
• An understanding of how to break down existing writing (poems, essays, short stories) into panels and visual sequences.
• Quick sketch methods for turning a written scene into a graphic draft.

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.

His Frontextos (visual poems) have been published and exhibited widely, including in the Mexican Cultural Institute in San Antonio, El Paso Museum of Art, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley as part of their “Distinguished Artist Series,” Southwest School of Art, Presa House Gallery, Brownsville Museum of Fine Art, and in the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center/Black Box Theater in Austin, TX. His poetry and Frontextos can be found in public spaces such as at the San Antonio Labor Plaza and at Poet’s Pointe.

Octavio is also the recipient of the Nebrija Creadores Scholarship which allowed him a month-long residency at the Instituto Franklin at Alcalá University in Alcalá de Henares, Spain. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and teaches at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. He was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.