First things first: Change that date you saved! The JaxbyJax Literary Arts Festival has been moved to Saturday, October 17th (to avoid a conflict with the incredible Porch Fest!)

Second: We are thrilled to announce an exciting new sponsor: Baptist Health! We’ll let you know all the ways we’ll be working together in the near future, but for now we’ll just say a gigantic THANKS!

We’re equally tickled that, due to the continued generosity of Ron Chamblin, owner of Chamblin’s Uptown & Bookmine, we’ll once again provide a cash award to the selected writers. Thank you, Ron!

Third, Brad of Brad Kuhn & Associates has this to say:

“Official history may be written after the fact by the winners of wars. Real history, however,  is chronicled, in real time, in the slivers and shards of soul songs scribbled by poets and writers. It is these upwellings that social scientists mine to find the unalloyed truth of a moment.

Writers of Jacksonville, this is our moment, and we are writing its history.

There is a lot to unpack in 2020: plague, isolation, fear, poverty, climate change, social injustice, and political corruption. There is also the hope for a better, brighter tomorrow, that can be found in the work of a new generation of activists who are inspiring us all with their courage and willingness to take a brutal beating and stand up, again, for a righteous cause.

This is the story of our times, but it is playing out right here in this beautiful, ugly; broken, healing; hide-bound, evolving; inspiring, infuriating Southern Gothic mess of a city we call home.

The Jax by Jax Literary Arts Festival was created for this moment. And even though it has been decided that we will not be able to get together in person this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the show must go on. Our voices must be heard—especially now.

With that in mind, the festival organizers are proud to announce that Jax by Jax VII will be a virtual event, with writer performances and commentary captured on video, and presented in a two-hour documentary.

Although it is disappointing that we will not all be able to get together in person this year, this adversity has created an incredible opportunity for us to use the technology of our time to capture our moment in the amber of digital video and create something unique and timeless.”

Applications will be open July 1st – 31st at :
https://www.jaxbyjax.com/