The sixth annual Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in July hosted three top narrative practitioners as keynote speakers.

• Mark Bowden, a best-selling author, screenwriter and journalist, is best known for his book Black Hawk Down, which won the Overseas Press Club’s 1997 Hal Boyle Award, was a finalist for the National Book Award and was the basis for the film.
• Mary Karr is the author of Lit, which continues her critically acclaimed and New York Times best-selling memoirs The Liars’ Club and Cherry.
• Gary Smith is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated whom Slate calls “the best magazine writer in America.”

Other speakers showcased the power of narrative in prose, screenwriting, songwriting, broadcasting, blogging and memoir.

The conference awarded $15,000 in cash prizes to winning essays and a book manuscript proposal, Finish Forty and Home, by Phil Scearce. UNT Press will publish the book, and the top 10 essays will be published in the Mayborn’s literary journal, Spurs of Inspiration.

Hosted by the Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism, the conference is one of the country’s preeminent writing conferences.