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Department of English

Award winning student writers and teachers hold Fresno State pennants in a group photo outside the Satellite Student Union.

Young Writers' Conference

Hosted annually by Fresno State's Department of English, the YWC gathers hundreds of Central California's brightest young writers and their teachers on campus for a day of creative writing and imagination.


This year's event:

Wednesday, April 26, 2023
8:15 a.m. to 2 p.m.

On campus: Satellite Student Union
Online: Zoom broadcast

Manuscript deadline:

Friday, February 24, 2023

Registration deadline:

Friday, April 7, 2023

Keynote Speaker: Ethan Chatagnier

Photo of author Ethan Chatagnier, who is wearing glasses and a dark jacket, with his arms folded.

Ethan Chatagnier is the author of Singer Distance, a literary speculative novel about a silent civilization on Mars, a quest to understand their mathematics, and emotional distances between people on Earth. Published by Tin House Books, Singer Distance has appeared on most-anticipated lists at The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Millions, Lit Hub, Gizmodo, Vulture, Popsugar, Alta Journal, and Daily Hive. Foreword Reviews called the book "the most arresting science fiction novel in recent memory."

Ethan's story collection Warnings from the Future was a Foreword INDIES award finalist and was published by Acre Books. His short stories have won a Pushcart Prize, been noted in the Best American Short Stories anthology, and appeared in literary magazines including Story, the New England Review, the Georgia Review, and The Normal School. His reviews, interviews, and essays have appeared in Lit Hub, The Millions, TriQuarterly, the Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.

An alumnus of Fresno State, Ethan lives with his family here in Fresno, California.