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Testimonials of Past Speakers

In being invited to join the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference of the Southwest this year, I came to know an extraordinary gathering of writers, journalists, educators, students and readers devoted to the art and craft of literary nonfiction, a subject that has been my passion and my mission for a half century.  It was most gratifying for me to become affiliated with the Mayborn Institute, which sponsors and promotes the discussion and application of nonfiction only on the highest standards. And I thus pledge my continuing sport to the growth and success of the Mayborn Institute’s program.

Gay Talese

It’s no accident that the Mayborn Conference has very quickly risen to preeminence among the nation’s literary conferences. Stacked with talent, smartly choreographed, and well-attended by enthusiastic conferees whose passion for non-fiction is palpable, the Mayborn offers a distinctive format no other conference can match.

It’s also a lot of fun. For all the high-powered names it draws from year to year, the conference is thoroughly unpretentious, and the gracious staff runs the conference with a heaping helping of Texas hospitality. It was a great pleasure to have been asked to come and address the Mayborn Conference, and I would gladly return in the years ahead. Keep up the good work!

Hampton Sides
Author, Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder

James Agee would have felt at home at the Mayborn Literary  Nonfiction Writers Conference. Higher praise, I cannot imagine.

In a universe of mass-media in which reportage is routinely corrupted by  political intimidation and marketing formula, and in which writers  conferences generally marginalize "nonfiction" as personal memoir, "inspirational" or some similar market-driven genre, Mayborn stands  pre-eminent. It illuminates the highest and most aesthetically satisfying of nonfiction's mandates: to boldly examine what Agee called "the cruel  radiance of what is" on behalf of a common reader. The Conference inspires its attendees, as well as its faculty, to write work that involves an insistent probing for factual truth and accountability in our fraught and dangerous society, and world.

Such work, and only such work, can perform a public good, conveyed by narrative prose writing that equals the deepest satisfactions of fiction.

Mayborn, with its persona of moral passion coupled with "writerly" inspiration, is on its way to becoming a national resource.

Ron Powers
Author, Flags of our Fathers and Mark Twain

There aren’t many such conferences, especially ones focused specifically on literary nonfiction rather than conventional journalism, so the conference at the University of North Texas is that much more important, and I can imagine it expanding every year to become one of the signature gatherings in the field…And what made it even more special – and why I would be happy to return – was the quality of the people involved and the character of the event. The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference of the Southwest was serious but spirited; professional but inclusive and embracing.

Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief and My Kind of Place

If a meteorite as big as a washing machine dropped from the sky on July 28 and landed on the Dallas-Fort Worth Hilton, it would have devastated literary nonfiction the way that plane crash with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens devastated rock and roll. There was so much talent on hand that weekend that even the old pros were sitting in the audience taking notes on each other’s talks. This is just plain the best nonfiction writing conference I’ve ever been to. It’s small enough and friendly enough that everyone gets to spend face time with whomever they want to, and it’s big enough that all the subgenres are covered: memoir, crime, sports, science. Mayborn rules!

Mary Roach, Columnist
Readers Digest
Author, “Spook” and “Stiff”

What Wimbledon is to the world of tennis, the Mayborn Writers Conference is to the world of narrative non-fiction. OK, George Getschow has swapped out the strawberries and pints of pale ale for Texas-style bar-b-que and beans, but the energy is the same, and so is the opportunity to rub elbows with the famous, the near-famous, and the soon-to-be famous. Where else will you find Joyce Carol Oates, floating through the crowd like a phantom, holding forth on Oprah and boxing; Burkhard Bilger, from the New Yorker, and Mary Roach, fresh from the morgue, swapping increasingly outlandish tales; Outside Magazine's Kevin Fedarko and Hampton Sides, dazzling a cluster of co-eds with their wit and rugged good looks; Nan Talese, sunglasses pushed up on her head like a tiara, making pronouncements about the glitterati literary scene (as though she were in Easthampton, New York rather than Grapevine, Texas). Where else will you find a gaggle of local writers, offering their polished expertise to the wannabes; and the wannabes and students--unapologetic for leaving their spouses, sniveling kids, and cats and dogs behind for a few days--basking in the glow of pure literary delight. The Mayborn Conference is a great place to hear great speeches about writing and the writer's world--but more than that, it's three days of celebration and downright good fun.

Erik Calonius
Author, “The Wanderer”

Being asked to participate in the Mayborn Conference was flattering; being there and seeing its great value to non-fiction writers was a genuinely rewarding experience. The generous give-and-take of lecturers and attendees alike elevated it far above any event I’ve ever been involved with. For my money, your conference has become the go-to affair for the serious-minded non-fiction writer.

Carlton Stowers, Author of  To The Last Breath and Careless Whispers, both winners of the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allen Poe Award as the Best Fact Crime Book of the Year

I liked this conference better than Neiman on many levels. I liked the fact that there was one speaker at a time—that everyone had the same shared experience. And I liked the fact that there were three hundred people, not over a thousand.

Sonia Nazario, Los Angeles Times staff writer and author, Enrique’s Journey

Thanks for your generosity in inviting me to the Mayborn Conference last year. It was, as you know, my first literary conference -- and having never attended one of these events before, I wasn't sure what to expect. As I think you now know, I was rather shocked and delighted. Laboring, as I do, in an atmosphere of extreme solitude that sometimes feels like a kind of self-enforced exile, I've never really felt part of a larger literary family: a network of individuals who can offer understanding, inspiration, and a feeling of belonging to an endeavor, the pursuit of excellence in the crafting of literary nonfiction, that extends far beyond oneself. The Mayborn Conference confronted me with this revelation, introduced me to this family, and sent me back to my little hermitage in northern New Mexico with a new and a deeply invigorating sense of purpose about what I do. For which I am grateful in a way that, as strange as it may sound for a writer to say, words cannot fully express. Thank you!

Kevin Fedarko, Writer, OUTSIDE magazine

I’ve been to several comparable events, including one put on every year by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, and I can tell you that yours was certainly among the best. It was a serious effort to explore the techniques of this extremely broad genre, but it also succeeded in being extremely entertaining.

Barry Newman, The Wall Street Journal