by Meghan McEnery

In 2014, St. Louis will celebrate its 250th anniversary and River Styx magazine, a non-profit independent literary journal, will celebrate its 40th birthday. In honor of these two events, River Styx is hosting the first annual Big River Writers Conference.

The Big River Writers Conference will take place at the Regional Arts Commission in the Delmar Loop. The conference will be a four-day event featuring writing workshops, craft lectures, publishing panels, happy hours, open-mic readings, receptions, and musical performances. Fiction writer George Singleton, non-fiction writer Kathleen Finneran, and poets Adrian Matejka and Dorianne Laux will serve as guest writers, teaching the intensive workshop classes offered at the conference. Curtis Sittenfeld and Missouri Poet Laureate William Trowbridge will read their work, and the editors of Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, and St. Louis Magazine will take part in a publishing panel. The conference will provide writers—both local and from around the country—with a chance to exchange ideas and study their craft.

River Styx’s goal is to provide the St. Louis community with high-caliber arts programming that is both accessible and affordable. Several of the conference events, including craft lectures and nightly readings, will be free and open to the public. Writers will be accepted into the workshop portion of the conference through an application process. For more information on attending the conference, visit www.riverstyx.org/conference.

The Big River Writers Conference is possible because of support from the Whitaker Foundation, the Regional Arts Commission, Enterprise Leasing, Arts and Education Council, and the generosity of the St. Louis community.