Mayborn conference features writers Atkinson, Orlean and Hollandsworth

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and military historian Rick Atkinson served as a keynote speaker at the ninth annual Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference in July. (Photo by Jun Ma)The final book in Rick Atkinson's World War II Liberation Trilogy, a narrative history series that took almost 15 years to complete, was released in May. By July, Atkinson was at work on an American Revolution trilogy.

"I'm relatively certain war is timeless," he said at UNT's ninth annual Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference, which is hosted by the Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism and has become one of the nation's pre-eminent gatherings of writers.

The three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner spoke of his calling as a narrative writer to "bring the dead to life."

"The first duty is to remember, whether you're a writer or not," he said.

Other keynote speakers were Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief, who spoke about her latest book on dog hero Rin Tin Tin, and Texas Monthly's Skip Hollandsworth, who talked about writing the screenplay for the movie Bernie.

The film was based on an article he wrote about an assistant funeral director-turned-confessed killer who was so beloved in his East Texas town that a change of venue was granted to have a fair chance of a conviction.

"It was a story you don't get in the way of," Hollandsworth said.

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