Micah Phua is a writer and editor, passionate about stories that inform as much as they entertain.
Editorial
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Calvin Center for Faith & Writing — Research Assistant
- Festival of Faith & Writing - Abstract
What began as a “conference” of “Contemporary Christian Writers in Community” in 1990 has now become the biennial “Festival of Faith and Writing” – a gathering of more than 2,000 people from around the world to celebrate belief and the literary arts, broadly defined.
The Festival had humble beginnings. It worked off of a budget in the thousands of dollars and was run in-house by eight members of the Calvin College English Department, alongside a small committee of students (see slide 65) tasked to handle logistical matters (Chimes article).
The first conference’s program summary states the department’s desire to create and foster “more than a traditional academic conference.” One department meeting’s minutes details their priority as wanting “to establish a credible, bi-annual event” with a clear audience in mind. Despite the familiar challenges of any small arts organization (see slides 56-57)–budget, staffing, logistics–what remains consistent across every Festival, no matter how early in its history, is the event’s ambitions: to form a coherent vision for the quality of writers the Festival invites and the experience the event curates for its attendees’.
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