The In Print Festival of First Books is a two-day event bringing writers who have just published their first books to campus, as well as an editor from a small press or literary journal, to give readings, talk about their experiences getting published, and work with our students.

The Spring 2016 festival will be held March 22 and 23, and will feature fiction writer Gabriel Urza, nonfiction writer Sarah Einstein, poet Sarah Blake, and editor Keith Tuma. The authors will be reading on Tuesday, March 22, and there will be a publishing panel on Wednesday, March 23. Both the readings and the panel will be held in AJ 175 at 8PM.

Gabriel Urza received his MFA from the Ohio State University. His family is from the Basque region of Spain where he lived for several years. He is a grant recipient from the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and his short fiction and essays have been published in Riverteeth, Hobart, Erlea, The Kenyon Review, West Branch, Slate and other publications. He also has a degree in law from the University of Notre Dame and has spent several years as a public defender in Reno, Nevada.

Sarah Einstein is the author of Mot: A Memoir (University of Georgia Press, 2015), Remnants of Passion (Shebooks, 2014), and numerous essays and short stories. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize, a Best of the Net, and the AWP Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She is a professor of Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Sarah Blake is co-founder of Submittrs. Her first book, Mr. West, is an unauthorized lyric biography of Kanye West and came out March 9, 2015 from Wesleyan University Press. She lives outside of Philadelphia and is excited to spend much of the next few years traveling to schools to read from Mr. West and talk to students.

Keith Tuma is the author of Fishing by Obstinate Isles: Modern and Postmodern British Poetry and American Readers (Northwestern, 1998) and On Leave: A Book of Anecdotes (Salt Publishing, 2011). He is the editor of Mina Loy: Woman and Poet (National Poetry Foundation, 1998), Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry (Oxford, 2001), and Rainbow Darkness: An Anthology of African American Poetry (Miami University Press, 2005). He teaches at Miami University in Ohio.

Also, free copies of the 2016 issue of The Broken Plate will be available at the festival. We hope to see you there!