Atlanta's literary scene is getting a lot more room to breathe this week. The 13th annual Letters Festival kicks off Monday and runs through Saturday, expanding from its usual single day and night into six full days of author readings, film screenings, panel discussions and writing workshops spread across Candler Park and Little Five Points.
The stretched-out format marks a real departure for the festival, whose previous editions typically took place over a single day and night, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Scott Daughtridge DeMer, founder and director of Lostintheletters, the nonprofit literary organization behind the event, told the paper the change was a deliberate experiment. “We thought this year would be a good opportunity to experiment with the model and expand the outreach,” he said.
Lostintheletters runs a writing studio and bookstore in Candler Park that opened last year, and the festival itself is its flagship annual event. Daily programming this year will be hosted at Lostintheletters, Gigi's, Lucille's and The Marianna at Wrecking Bar Pub, according to Rough Draft Atlanta, which also reported the dates as Nov. 9 through 14.
A Dozen-Plus Writers, Local and National
The lineup pulls together a mix of Atlanta-based and national writers. Local authors on the bill include Rough Draft's own dining reporter Sarra Sedghi alongside Justin Haynes, Maya Marshall, Victoria Kornick, Nicole Hernandez, Jessamine Chan, Jay Morris, Donna Mintz, Ra'Niqua Lee and Masha Vlasova, per the same account. Writers traveling in from elsewhere in the country include Danielle Pafunda, Genevieve Plunkett, Kristen Gleason, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Johannes Göransson, Stine An and Paige Lewis.
Several of the participating writers carry notable credentials. Haynes, an Oglethorpe University faculty member, wrote the novel “Ibis,” which won the 2026 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Lee received the inaugural Georgia Writers Association John Lewis Writing Grant for fiction in 2021.
Food Writing, Erotic Imagery and Translation on the Program
The festival's expanded format has made room for programming that goes beyond the standard author reading. The schedule also includes sessions titled “Walk and Write: A Place-based Writing Experience,” “Surprise, Transgression, and the Erotic Image,” and “Writing Across Languages: Poets Who Translate,” according to Rough Draft Atlanta.
On the film side, the festival will premiere Masha Vlasova's Video Nights series on Tuesday, debuting with a screening of short experimental films by McLean Fahnestock, Jonathan Rattner and Vlasova herself, per Rough Draft Atlanta's reporting.
Tickets and Access
Individual event tickets run $16.34, with an all-access pass priced at $81.88, Rough Draft Atlanta reported. That marks a shift from last year's model: the 2025 Letters Festival, a two-day event hosted at The Goat Farm, offered sliding-scale tickets between $10 and $50, according to Lostintheletters. That 2025 edition featured readings by Emrys Donaldson, Zefyr Lisowski and Victoria Chang, plus a performance by T. Lang, along with poetry, playwriting and fiction workshops led by Lisowski, Dana Stringer and Doug Jones.
Lostintheletters describes the Letters Festival as an annual gathering of artists and writers showcasing the best in independent literature. The event became a fixture each November after its earlier run, while the organization's separate reading series shifted to a quarterly schedule, according to Atlanta Magazine.
DeMer has framed this year's expansion as more than just a scheduling change. He told the AJC the longer format creates more opportunities for author participation, a wider variety of experiences for attendees, and more chances for connection across the six days of programming in Candler Park and Little Five Points.
