Festival of Faith & Writing 2026
Every two years, the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing hosts the Festival of Faith & Writing, drawing a crowd of writers and readers from all over North America to the campus of Calvin University for three days of presentations, panel discussions, plenary sessions, receptions, book signings, and interactions with other people who love words.
This year’s festival ran from April 16 through 18, with 70 sessions involving over 50 speakers—including poets, novelists, journalists, filmmakers, children’s and youth authors, editors, publishing executives, and more—presenting ideas, advice, and stories to over 1,500 people attending the event.
Plenary speakers included Laurie Halse Anderson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ross Gay, and Barbara Brown Taylor.
Halse Anderson described her work in bringing history to life for young readers, setting her novels in American history and helping readers to better understand and empathize with ordinary people who went through major events like the American Revolution and an epidemic that swept Philadelphia in 1793. In 2020, Halse Anderson heard from families who said that her book Fever 1793 helped them explore and discuss scary feelings about the COVID-19 pandemic. Because the book was set in history, she said, “The distance of time and space gave young people a safe place to talk out their fears.”
Wall Kimmerer, Potawatomi author of Braiding Sweetgrass and The Serviceberry, encouraged listeners to interact with and observe the natural world, seeing our connection with it. She challenged the idea that land is a commodity or a resource, seeing it rather as a co-creature with us. “When we fall in love with the world, we won’t stand by as it’s destroyed,” she said. She suggested that if living things and ecosystems could be given status as legal entities, they could be better protected from damage and have a say in what happens to them.
Gay, a poet, explored themes of gardening, learning, and interconnection. He suggested that our computerized society is making us lonely, dissociated, and weak. “What happened to asking for directions, checking the weather with our hands, asking for recipes from our family and friends?” Reading excerpts of his poems and essays, he talked about the joy of digging potatoes, seeing tomatoes grow, planting flowers in boots and boxes and bins, and eating ripe fruit warmed from the sun.
In the closing plenary session, Brown Taylor spoke about observing the world, being curious, and learning to share thoughts through words. She encouraged her listeners to broaden their understanding of who was included when they said “we” and to work to understand the experiences of the people and the world around them. “Full truth is unsayable, but we keep trying; that’s what makes us human,” she said, concluding, “Let’s continue to come together to celebrate how many more ways there are to try.”
Workshops each day offered a wide variety of presentations, panels, interviews, and discussions. Topics included poetry, journalism, fiction, publishing, editing, artificial intelligence and craft, history, nature writing, genre fiction, storytelling, news writing, working with literary agents, writing for different audiences, working with illustrators, creating character and narrative arcs, translation work, the growth of audiobooks, and more.
Some presenters related elements of their own journeys. Karina Yan Glaser, author of The Vanderbeekers series, and Jonathan Todd, who wrote and illustrated the graphic novel Timid, both experienced upheaval in their lives during sixth grade, and today they both write for middle-school children, offering relatable stories and hope to young people currently living through years that can be tumultuous and confusing.
Other sessions offered practical advice about setting up a routine and habits to facilitate the writing process, creating a platform or a network of readers as a step toward finding a publisher, interviewing people for news or history writing, understanding what is expected in different types of fiction, and connecting with an agent.
Some sessions were both practical and entertaining. In a session about place and landscape, the panel included writers whose stories are rooted in Alaska, Montana, Arkansas, and Baja California. Asked whether they find themselves always seeing life with a writer’s eye, Christine Byl, a trailbuilder, said she lives in the moment, since she is usually in “wet tents” with no access to a notebook for half of every year; she writes about places from memory. Eli Cranor said he has had the opposite experience, explaining that even in some of life’s most poignant and important moments, he finds he hears (in a drawn-out whisper), “Taaaake noooootes. You can uuuse this.” Already laughing at his dramatic style, the engaged crowd roared when contemplative fiction writer A. Muia, seated next to Cranor, slid over and joked, “Hmm . . . I find I can’t seem to move any further away from you on this couch. . . .”
In a presentation on writing from a place of joy, youth-fiction author Kate Albus encouraged writers to read widely to find what pleases them in a book. “We carry a syllabus around inside of us, filled with stacks of books,” she said. We can ask ourselves, “What books stuck with you as a child? What books shaped you as an adult?” She suggested keeping a notebook filled with favorite lines from those books. Once we understand what we appreciate in books, we can begin to write them, creating worlds we would like to live in or see our children live in, shaping characters we enjoy spending time with.
Booksellers in every major venue offered books by festival speakers and others for readers with a wide variety of interests and tastes. A main exhibit hall provided space for representatives from 39 different organizations, including publishers, magazines, journals, seminaries, universities, writers guilds, podcasts, and the main festival bookstore.
Evenings offered other creative expressions, including a film screening of Leap of Faith by documentarian Nicholas Ma, a concert with Jess Ray and others, and various sponsored receptions. For attendees interested in visual arts, Scott Erickson’s In the Low exhibit was on display in the Center Art Gallery throughout the event.
