Tupelo Press
Southwest Writers Conference at Truchas Peaks Place
This is a powerful, immersive experience for poets and, for the first time, a new section for memoir writers in an exquisite setting located halfway between Santa Fe and historic Taos, high in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. Now in our 15th year.
2025 Conference Dates:
October 31st – November 3rd
Our Wildly Popular Conference
from Tupelo Press
Conceived and presented by four of the most experienced writers, editors and teachers in the nation, this is an immersive writing conference open to poets and memoirists. This conference consists of intimate workshops meeting over a period of four days and three nights, and will be led by Jeffrey Levine, Founder and Publisher of Tupelo Press, Layli Long Soldier whose astonishing book of poetry Whereas is taught in creative writing, poetry, and Indigenous studies courses throughout the country, Betsy Bonner, a renowned writing teacher and memoirist writers, beloved returning poetry faculty Veronica Golos. The conference fee includes four days of inspired instruction, craft talks, readings (both faculty and participant), gorgeous accommodations, and three delicious meals per day.
FAQ & Schedule
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Please download the following document:
Preconference Assignments
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Truchas Directions
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We know the value of sustained conversations that can build meaningful professional and artistic relationships. Tupelo Press Founder, Publisher, and Artistic Director, Jeffrey Levine will open the conference on Friday evening, welcoming each participant, joined by Layli Longsoldier, Betsy Bonner, a faculty member of the Writer’s Foundry M.F.A. program at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York and the former Director of the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, where she teaches an annual poetry seminar, and returning faculty Veronica Golos. Together they will curate a sense of community alongside the work (see bios below).
During the course of the conference, faculty will make time to talk with about your concerns as writers: about etymology or the “poe biz” develop your understanding of how to choose the right press for you, and more. By the end of the retreat, you will have a set of new tools for writing, revision, and submission to take home from Truchas and apply to your writing life.
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Participants may sign up separately (in advance) with Jeffrey Levine for an intensive, poem by poem review and annotation of your full-length or chapbook manuscript. All manuscripts will be returned, fully edited, in advance of the conference. Cost: $400 for chapbook-length manuscripts, (up to 26 pages) $800 for full-length manuscripts, (up to 54 pages) manuscripts.
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Rooms are generous and shared.
There are three single options, below, offered on a first come first served basis. Please indicate your interest in your registration form.
There is a $750 supplement for the single ensuite roomPlease email conferences@tupelopress.org with any questions beforehand.
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Email: conferences@tupelopress.org
Phone: 413‐664‐9611 -
The conference registration fee will be announced in later this summer.
Refund Policy: Refund up to 30 days before conference, less 15% processing fee. Tupelo Press Conferences reserves the right to cancel this conference without penalty, its liability limited to a full refund of registration fees.
Payment Procedure: Your place is not reserved for the Conference until full payment is received. We will not charge your card unless and until your application has been accepted.
See What Our Alumni Have to Say:
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“The elegance of the design of the conference layers conversation and in-depth analysis of individual poems. The structure of meetings enables a dozen serious and distinguished writers and teachers of writing from across the U.S. to meet over four days with two editors/publishers whose fingers are on the pulse of literature in our day. From their vantage as working poets themselves, Jeffrey’s and Kristina’s commitment to supporting creative writing has led them to give of their own energies and time and resources to hundreds of writers in daily devotion and practice. And now, their full attention is close-reading our work.”
B.M.
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“The benefit of any Tupelo conference or event to writers is in the creation of community. Jeffery and his carefully curated band of associates have been creating circles of community for years. COVID posed the challenge of how to do that on a Zoom platform. Yes, we missed the socializing and lingering over books on a table, The circling to talk 1:1 with people who would guide us in the next days. I did make some lasting friends in those earlier times. But the Tupelo skill at creating community is an institutional skill. They simply know how to do it and it was done well on Zoom through a combination of structure, Jeffrey’s ineffable listening skill, and Kristina Maria Darling’s vast compendium of knowledge. Simply said, I would do this again and if you value your project, it’s a good bet for you too.”
M.C.
Meet the Team
Email: conferences@tupelopress.org
Phone: 413‐664‐9611
Thank you for your interest in Tupelo Press Conferences.
We guarantee a quick turnaround in response!
Jeffrey Levine
Jeffrey Levine is the author of four books of poetry: Rumor of Cortez, nominated for a 2006 Los Angeles Times Literary Award in Poetry, Mortal, Everlasting, which won the 2002 Transcontinental Poetry Prize, At the Kinnegad Home for the Bewildered, Salmon Press, 2019, and The After Party, coming from Salmon Press in 2026. Levine’s many poetry prizes include the Larry Levis Prize from the Missouri Review, the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize, the Ekphrasis Poetry Prize, and the American Literary Review poetry prize. His poems have garnered 21 Pushcart nominations. In addition to his own writing, he is principal translator of Canto General, Pablo Neruda’s epic work of poetry. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, Levine is founder, Artistic Director and Publisher of Tupelo Press, an award-winning independent literary press located in the historic Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. Also an accomplished musician, Levine is a concert clarinetist, jazz guitarist and pianist.
Layli Longsoldier
Layli Long Soldier is the author of the collection Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), which won the National Book Critics Circle award, the 2018 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She wrote the chapbook Chromosomory (Q Ave Press, 2010), and her work has been widely anthologized in books like Native Voices (Tupelo Press, 2019) and The Larger Voice (NACF, 2022).
On Whereas, poet Dean Rader remarks, “What is especially compelling about Long Soldier is that she not only undermines language, she undermines form as well. Elsewhere, I have written about the importance of ‘compositional resistance’ for Native poets. By this, I refer to how a poet composes her poem, the form it takes, how it looks on the page, how its typography expresses itself. Whereas is a masterful example of compositional resistance.”
Her poems and critical work have appeared in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, American Poet, The American Reader, The Kenyon Review, BOMB, American Indian Journal of Culture and Research, PEN America, and The Brooklyn Rail, among many others.
In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. She was awarded a Whiting Writer’s Award in 2016 and was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2018. In 2021, she received an Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature and the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize in the UK.
Long Soldier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Bard College. She teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts and serves as the 2024-25 Endowed Chair at Texas State University. She resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Veronica Golos
Veronica Golos is the author of four poetry books: GIRL awarded the Naji Naaman Honor Prize, 2019 (Beirut,Lebanon); Rootwork, winner of the Southwest Book Design Award in Poetry, 2016; Vocabulary of Silence winner of the 2011 New Mexico Book Award, translated into Arabic, Spanish and Persian; and A Bell Buried Deep, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. She is the former editor of the Feminist Journal of Religion, and co editor of the Taos Journal of Poetry. Golos teaches poetry for Hugo House, Gemini Ink, and SOMOS. She is a poetry book reviewer for Tueplo Quarterly, and is an editor for poetry manuscripts. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, with her husband, David Pérez.
Betsy Bonner
Betsy Bonner is the author of Round Lake, a poetry collection published by Four Way Books. She is a faculty member of the Writer’s Foundry M.F.A. program at St. Joseph’s College in Brooklyn, New York and the former Director of the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center, where she teaches an annual poetry seminar. Her work has appeared in The New Republic, The Paris Review, Parnassus, Poetry Daily, The Brooklyn Quarterly and The Southampton Review. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and a BA from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony, Eliot House and the VCCA, and a mentor in PEN’s Prison Writing Program.
