Old Drafts, New Writing: Turning Text into Graphic Literature with Octavio Quintanilla

Literary Masters Lecture Series

Have a draft you don’t know what to do with? Learn how to transform it into graphic storytelling.

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

In this 2-part master session, you’ll learn how to:

• Model from authors and artists who successfully blend literature and visual art.

• Develop an understanding of how to break down existing writing (poems, essays, short stories) into panels and visual sequences.

• Practice quick sketch methods for turning a written scene into a graphic draft.

Learn how to transform your old writing into graphic literature! 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 narratives. Each session features an engaging craft talk, actionable writing strategies, and a live Q&A with the author.

Octavio Quintanilla is the 2025 Texas Poet Laureate and an award-winning poet and visual artist exploring the intersection of text and image. Learn from one of Texas’s leading literary voices.

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), and Las Horas Imposibles / The Impossible Hours (University of Arizona Press, 2025), winner of the 2024 Ambroggio Prize of the Academy of American Poets. He’s the founder and director of the literature & arts festival VersoFrontera, publisher of Alabrava Press, and former Poet Laureate of San Antonio.