Featured Speakers

Come for the poetry, stay for the laughter, hope, and astronauts.

Southern storytelling meets a little bit of magic. Bradley Sides brings together humor, heart, and the unexpected in The Volcano Keeper, inviting readers to step into stories where ordinary lives can take extraordinary turns.

Brenda Cárdenas is the current Wisconsin Poet Laureate and recipient of a 2026 Academy of American Poets’ Poet Laureate Fellowship. She has authored Trace (Red Hen Press, 2023), winner of the 2023 Society of Midland Authors Award for Poetry and silver winner of Foreword Review’s Indie Poetry Prize; Boomerang (Bilingual Press); and three chapbooks. She also co-edited the anthologies Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance and Entre el corazón y la tierra: Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets in the Midwest.

An eminent Austen scholar and author of Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane (2025). Looser leads the convention's Spotlight Author programming, framing Austen's craft, controversies, and continuing influence on English-language fiction.

A longtime Sigma Tau Delta member, Gary Dop brings humor, heart, and a sharp eye for the absurd to his work as a poet, playwright, and professor

Featured as a master of technê: Austen's contributions to the modern novel, her breakthrough use of free indirect discourse, her psychologically nuanced characters, and her structural innovations, continue to shape what English-language fiction can do.

Step into Jane Austen’s world with Kim Wilson. Kim Wilson brings the past to life with wit, warmth, and a generous helping of historical charm.