After blowing out candles to celebrate the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference’s fifth birthday, a crowd of 500 writers and writers to-be heard the voice of This American Life host Ira Glass ringing out from the dark. Seated on stage behind his sound board, the NPR storyteller treated the audience to a de-facto radio show while musing on how to tell stories worth hearing. The audience returned the favor by giving Glass, the keynote speaker for the sold-out conference, a standing ovation.

Glass was part of a lineup of standout storytellers, including travel writer Paul Theroux and The New Yorker’s Latin American correspondent Alma Guillermoprieto, who shared writing tips and anecdotes with conference participants throughout the weekend.

Organizers announced that the Mayborn conference is partnering with Bloomberg News to offer an annual lecture series starting next year. The first speaker in the series will be Amanda Bennett, Bloomberg’s executive editor of enterprise. The Mayborn conference also awarded a book contract to Aledo resident Sally Pringle for her manuscript Quiet Heroes, which details her experiences with Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, located outside of Amarillo.

Hosted by the Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism, the conference is one of the pre-eminent writing conferences in the country.