One of the nation’s largest writers’ conventions and book fairs is coming to Baltimore next year.
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) will have its 2026 Conference & Bookfair at the Baltimore Convention Center from March 4 to 7, 2026, and organizers have begun registering attendees.
The prestigious four-day event typically draws between 8,000 to 10,000 attendees, making it a can’t-miss weekend for the literary community and providing an economic boost for its host city. This year’s event in Los Angeles drew 10,000 people. The 2023 conference in Seattle drew more than 9,000. Baltimore has only hosted it once before, in 2003.
“The AWP Conference & Bookfair is the essential gathering for writers, teachers, students, editors and publishers,” the organization says on its website. “Join thousands of attendees, explore hundreds of events and exhibitions, and immerse in four days of vital literary community and celebration in Baltimore!”
Baltimore-based writer and filmmaker John Waters will be the keynote speaker on March 5. His talk is sponsored by Johns Hopkins University, and Atomic Books of Hampden will be selling his books. The city and region will be gearing up for SAIL250 Maryland and Airshow Baltimore, a series of events planned to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary.
Founded in 1967
Founded in 1967 by R. V. Cassill and George Garrett, the AWP is a nonprofit literary organization that provides “support, advocacy, resources and community” to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 125 writers’ conferences and centers.
“AWP amplifies the voices of writers of writers and the academic programs and organizations that serve them while championing diversity and excellence in creative writing,” according to its mission statement.
The first AWP conference was held in 1973 at the Library of Congress, where it hosted six events and 16 presenters. Garrett planned the first gathering with help from the National Endowment for the Arts. Presenters included Elliott Coleman, founder of the Writing Seminars at Hopkins; Paul Engle, founder of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; poets Josephine Jacobsen and Miller Williams, and novelists Ralph Ellison and Wallace Stegner.
Sprawling event
Since then, the event has grown from a small conference with several thousand attendees to a sprawling event with 800 exhibitors and more than 500 events.
In addition to the large bookfair and its exhibitors, it features presentations; readings; lectures; panel discussions; book signings and receptions. Participants typically include the representatives of the Academy of American Poets; the Authors Guild; the Center for Fiction; Community of Literary Magazines & Presses, and the Poetry Society of America.
Presenters include winners of literary prizes such as the Man Booker Prize; the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize, as well as MacArthur and Guggenheim fellows.
‘AI & the Editor’
The 2026 conference will include in-person events and a select number of prerecorded virtual events that will be available on demand.
The AWP has released a list of some of the “tentative accepted events” for 2026. Titles include: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Etruscan Press Poetry Reading; Forty Years of Joseph Beam’s ‘In the Life’ (an anthology); Fifty Years of Gargoyle: A Celebration of Gargoyle Magazine and Richard Peabody; A Laboratory for Innovative Storytelling: The Goucher MFA in Nonfiction; A Lifetime to Write: Fifty Years of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers; A New Era for Translated Literature: Three Indie Publishers Discuss; and A Psalm for the Wild Teacher: Building Genre Fiction Workshops That Inspire.
Also, A Return to Our Senses: Strategies for Hands-on Writing in the Poetry Workshop; A Strange Land & a Peculiar People: Appalachians Writing Against the Stereotypes; A Writer’s Place is in a Union; Activating the Experimental Impulse: Prompts and Provocations: ADHD & the Writer: Strategies to Harness Your Superpower; Adjunct Writers Caucus; African Diaspora Caucus; After the Debut: Hope for the Best, Prepare for the Worst; AI & the Editor: Redefining Writer-Editor Collaboration; Alternative Nation, or Whatever: Gen X Perspectives on the Writing Life; Anti-Grammar and Other Upside-Down Experiments with Syntax & Usage; and Anti-Racist Pedagogy: Creative Writing Worships at Community Colleges.
Also, Architectures of FuturoPasados & Untouchable Voices: Manoa Reading & Discussion; Art School Writing Faculty Caucus; Asian American & Diasporic Caucus; Assimilation Blues: Citizenship & Belonging in Indigenous Fiction; At the Intersection of Writing & Healing: Writers in Narrative Medicine; Auntie, Outsider; Authoritarians in the Lusophone World: Models of Opposition for American Writing; Bad Romance: On Writing Difficult Relationships; Battle for Authenticity: Two-Year College Strategies to Resist AI in the Classroom; and Beauty vs. Fidelity: The Poetry Translator’s Gamble.
Other previous host cities for the AWP convention since 2000 include Kansas City; Philadelphia; San Antonio; Portland, Ore.; Tampa; Minneapolis, Boston; Chicago; Denver; New York City; Atlanta; Austin, Vancouver; New Orleans and Palm Springs.
More information about AWP and the 2026 conference are available on its website, www.awpwriter.org
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