By Sam McDonald
The 48th Annual Old ֱ University Literary Festival, “Suspend Your Disbelief,” will run October 5-10 and will showcase imaginative storytelling in an unprecedented array of formats.
Co-directed by MFA creative writing faculty members Marianne Chan and John McManus, the festival will feature readings, dance, music, theater, panels, workshops, a guided nature walk and a game jam.
“To suspend disbelief is to trust the artist, to let the boundary between reality and imagination blur until the written word is a vessel of wisdom and marvel,” reads an introduction to the festival.
Headliners include National Book Award longlisted fiction writer Tony Tulathimutte, Cave Canem Poetry Prize winner Ariana Benson, Nebula Award-winning speculative fiction writer Phenderson Djèlí Clark, INSPIRIT Dance Company founder Christal Brown and O. Henry prize-winning author Crystal Wilkinson.
The MFA Creative Writing Program’s Fall 2025 Edith and Forrest P. White Writer-in-Residence, the novelist and critic Lauren Oyler, will read from her Washington Post Best Book of the Year, “Fake Accounts.”
By collaborating with more than a dozen departments and organizations on- and off-campus, this year’s festival offers more genres of art and storytelling than ever.
The festival is teaming with ROŪGE Theatre Company to stage “The Great Filipino American ASWANG Pageant,” a new play blending Filipino folklore, mythology and modern pageantry. Also, the dance company INSPIRIT adapted Old ֱ University poet Remica Bingham Risher’s work into an immersive evening-length dance and installation to be performed at Norfolk’s Attucks Theatre. Kindra Greene, executive director of the Elizabeth River Trail Foundation, will lead a guided walk along the ODU section of the Elizabeth River Trail. And in “Shadows of the Imagination,” a competitive, literary-themed game jam hosted by the Monarch Institute for Game Design and Development, participants will have two weeks to design story-based games that correspond to the theme of the game jam and the literary festival.
Additional writers and artists who will be part of the festival include January Gill O’Neil, Annabelle Tometich, Kristen Renee Miller, Erika Howsare, Princess Joy L. Perry, JJJJJerome Ellis, and poet Tim Seibles performing with jazz bassist Chris Brydge.
The full festival schedule, including presenter bios and parking information, can be found here. All events are free and open to the public.
“What I like about this year’s festival is the broad range of forms and genres coming together to explore facets of the human experience,” said ODU Executive Director for the Arts Cullen Strawn. “The annual festival is a truly great thing about ODU.”
Over a span of nearly five decades, the festival has hosted literary luminaries including William Styron, Allen Ginsberg, Gwendolyn Brooks, Billy Collins, Rita Dove and George Plimpton.
Follow the Literary Festival on Facebook @ODULitFest and on Instagram @olddominionmfa.
Follow @oduarts on Facebook and Instagram for updates on public programming.