Literary Masters Lecture Series

Write a World for Readers to Explore

Monday(s), February 16 & 23, 2026, 6:30-8pm CT, online via Zoom.
Nonmember: $90; Member: $75; Student/Educ/Mil: $63
*EARN CPEs; TWO SCHOLARSHIPS AVAILABLE

 Join us for the first Literary Masters Lecture of the year and learn to craft an immersive setting and atmosphere readers can truly sink into! Each session features an engaging craft talk, actionable writing strategies, and a live Q&A with the author.

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.

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

Participants will leave this lecture series with:

• An understanding of the important role setting and atmosphere play in a piece of writing
• Techniques for creating an immersive setting and atmosphere in any genre
• Additional activities to complete at home following the lecture

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.