The eighth annual Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference featured Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and storytellers.

Keynote speakers for this year's conference were Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes, who also is editor of 26 works of fiction, history, biography and memoir; The New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning storyteller Isabel Wilkerson, the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize; and nonfiction author and poet Luis Alberto Urrea, a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist. The July conference also featured other nationally known writers and authors whose nonfiction work has achieved national acclaim. In total, the 2012 conference showcased the work of more than 30 of the nation's preeminent journalists, authors and visual storytellers.

As part of the conference, $15,000 in cash was awarded for winning essays, narrative writing and book manuscripts.

Each year, the conference is hosted by UNT's Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism and publishes Mayborn magazine and Ten Spurs literary journal, a collection of the 10 best essays submitted to the Mayborn's national writing contest.