The Delaware Literary Connection (DLC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to serving writers in the Delaware area and promoting the literary arts. We do this through our workshops, readings, newsletters, contests and conferences, and through strong affiliations with academic institutions and other regional literary organizations. We are encouraged by the Delaware Heritage Commission and the Delaware Division of the Arts. DLC members include poets, novelists, short story writers, essayists, journalists, playwrights, video producers and those who just enjoy writing and want exposure to it. The DLC encourages a strong sense of community among those interested in the literary arts and strives to promote creative writing throughout the First State.

The DLC was established in 1993 and has a 20+ year history of offering members lively and interesting conferences, readings and workshops.

Authors and educators appearing at DLC events have included:

Mark Bowden, author of the non-fiction bestseller Black Hawk Down, which was nominated for a National Book Award

Patsy Sims, director of the MFA program at Goucher College and author of The Klan, Cleveland Benjamin’s Dead and Can Somebody Shout Amen!

Elise Juska, whose fourth novel, The Blessings, was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers series and included on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s 2014 Best Books List, is the director of the creative writing program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and recipient of the 2014 Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching

Julianna Baggott, novelist, poet, essayist and associate professor of the Florida State University Creative Writing Program, whose Pure Triology novels have been optioned by Fox 2000

Gregory Frost, science fiction and fantasy novelist, short story writer (The Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories) and essayist, directs fiction writing workshops at Swarthmore College

Jeanne Murray Walker, author of Helping the Morning and The Geography of Memory: A Pilgrimage Through Alzheimer’s teaches poetry, script writing and creative writing at the University of Delaware

Maribeth Fischer, author of The Language of Goodbye and The life You’ve Longed For

Elizabeth Mosier, author of The Playgroup, My Life as a Girl, Calling, teaches creative writing at Bryn Mawr College;

Curtis Smith, award-winning author of Beasts and Men, Sound and Noise and The Species Crown

Joann Balingit, Poet Laureate of the State of Delaware and author of two poetry collections, Your Heart and How It Works, winner of the 2010 Global Filipino Literary Award for poetry, and Forage, winner of the Whitebird Chapbook Prize

Faye Moskowitz, former commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” English department chair and director of the Creative Writing Program at George Washington University, and author of the memoirs A Leak in the Heart, Whoever Finds This: I love You, And the Bridge is Love, and Peace in the House

Kim Roberts, editor of The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and author of three books of poems, most recently Animal Magnetism, winner of the 2011 Pearl Poetry Prize, and editor of the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC

Charles Bondhus, author of All the Heart We Could Carry, winner of the Main Street Rags 2013 Poetry Book Award, and professor of literature at Raritan College

Pat Valdata, award-winning poet and educator, author of Inherent Vice and Looking for Biovalve

Diane Sahms-Guarnieri, author of Images of Being (StoneGarden.net publishing, 2011) and poetry editor of the Fox Chase Review

Publishers and editors who have participated in recent DLC events include:

Carla Spataro, editor and co-publisher of Philadelphia Stories

Wilson Wyatt, founder of The Delmarva Review

Jamie Brown, publisher and editor of The Broadkill Review

Terry Plowman, editor of Delaware Beach Life