Registration Opens for Lamppost Literary Conference

August 19, 2025

Registration is now open for the Lamppost Literary Conference, which will be held on Oct. 3, 2025, on the OBU campus. The event features separate tracks for educators and students, including breakout sessions, workshops, campus tours, panels and keynote presentations.

The conference will begin with check-in at 8:30 a.m. in the Geiger Center, rooms 219-220, followed by a welcome at 9 a.m. Morning sessions include “Faith, Fatherhood and the Great Books Tradition” with Dr. Daniel Spillman for educators and a creative writing workshop with Dr. Benjamin Myers for students. Additional educator sessions cover “From Arthur to Aslan: Teaching Tools for Raising Up Redemptive Readers and Writers” with Dr. Lindsey Panxhi and “Teaching T. S. Eliot” with Dr. Alan Noble. Students will participate in a campus tour during the morning.

The afternoon program includes a keynote address from Andrew Black, an awards presentation and an educator panel on “Great Books Across Educational Contexts” with Andrew Black, Rachel Byrd and Holly Kubiak. Students will attend a class session with Dr. Benjamin Myers, followed by a student panel on life at OBU.

The day will conclude with dinner and an evening keynote by James Matthew Wilson. He is the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas.

The author of fourteen books, his most recent collection of poems is “Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds” (Word on Fire, 2024). “The Strangeness of the Good” (2020), won the poetry book of the year award from the Catholic Media Awards. The Dallas Institute of Humanities awarded him the Hiett Prize in 2017; Memoria College gave him the Parnassus Prize in 2022; and the Conference on Christianity and Literature twice gave him the Lionel Basney Award.

In addition to his role at the University of Saint Thomas, he serves as poet-in-residence of the Benedict XVI Institute, scholar-in-residence of Aquinas College, editor of Colosseum Books and poetry editor of Modern Age magazine.

Wilson was educated at the University of Michigan (B.A.), the University of Massachusetts (M.A.) and the University of Notre Dame (M.F.A., Ph.D.), where he subsequently held a Sorin Research Fellowship. Wilson joined the University of Saint Thomas, Houston, in 2021, when he co-founded the Master of Fine Arts program.

For more information and to register, visit the Lampost Literary Conference web page.