The University of North Dakota Writers Conference is an annual literary event held at the University of North Dakota (UND) located in Grand Forks, North Dakota, whose mission is to offer open access to the arts and create opportunities for discussion of how they impact our everyday lives. The Writers Conference is known for being one of the most distinguished cultural events on campus and the state. It brings prominent writers from the United States and abroad to Grand Forks. To date, the Conference has hosted over 360 authors (most genres) and artists to its literary event, including thirty-five Pulitzer Prize winners, [1] four recipients of the Nobel Prize, [2] and many others who have received awards from the MacArthur Foundation, National Book Foundation, National Book Critics Circle, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and more. The participants are by invite only, but all events are, and have always been, free and open to the public.
In recent years, thanks in part to grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, over 150 hours of archival video footage is now freely available for educational, scholarly, and historical purposes at commons.und.edu/writers-conference.
Karen Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry, and children's books featuring Native American characters and settings. She is an enrolled member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people.
Grand Forks is the 3rd most populous city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Grand Forks County. According to the 2020 census, the city's population was 59,166. Grand Forks, along with its twin city of East Grand Forks, Minnesota, forms the center of the Grand Forks, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is often called Greater Grand Forks or the Grand Cities.
The University of South Dakota (USD) is a public research university in Vermillion, South Dakota. Established by the Dakota Territory legislature in 1862, 27 years before the establishment of the state of South Dakota, USD is the flagship university for the state of South Dakota and the state's oldest public university. It occupies a 274 acres (1.11 km2) campus located in southeastern South Dakota, approximately 63 miles (101 km) southwest of Sioux Falls, 39 miles (63 km) northwest of Sioux City, Iowa, and north of the Missouri River.
Ralph Louis Engelstad was an American businessman who owned the Imperial Palace casino-hotels in Las Vegas and in Biloxi, Mississippi. He also owned the Kona Kai motel in Las Vegas, which later became the Klondike Hotel and Casino. He was also the donor for the construction of the $104 million Ralph Engelstad Arena for his alma mater, the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and another arena bearing his name in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. Engelstad was also a co-developer of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Engelstad was one of the very few independent casino-hotel owners in Las Vegas.
North Dakota State University is a public land-grant research university in Fargo, North Dakota. It was founded as North Dakota Agricultural College in 1890 as the state's land-grant university. As of 2021, NDSU offers 94 undergraduate majors, 146 undergraduate degree programs, 5 undergraduate certificate programs, 84 undergraduate minors, 87 master's degree programs, 51 doctoral degree programs of study, and 210 graduate certificate programs. It is classified among "R1-Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity".
The University of North Dakota is a public research university in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was established by the Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishment of the state of North Dakota.
The Writers' Trust of Canada is a registered charity which provides financial support to Canadian writers.
Larry Alfred Woiwode was an American writer from North Dakota, where he was the state's Poet Laureate from 1995 until his death. His work appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Atlantic Monthly, Harpers, Gentleman's Quarterly, The Partisan Review and The Paris Review. He was the author of five novels; two collections of short stories; a commentary titled "Acts"; a biography of the Gold Seal founder and entrepreneur, Harold Schafer, Aristocrat of the West; a book of poetry, Even Tide; and reviews and essays and essay-reviews that appeared in dozens of publications, including The New York Times and The Washington Post Book World. He received North Dakota's highest honor, the Theodore Roosevelt Rough Rider Award, in 1992.
The North Dakota Fighting Hawks represent the University of North Dakota, competing as a member of the Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC) in the NCAA Division I's Football Championship Subdivision. From 1973 to 2008, they played in the NCAA's NCAA Division II, winning the national championship in 2001. From 1955 to 1972, they competed in the NCAA's College Division where they participated in and won three bowl games.
The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) is a nonprofit literary organization that provides support, advocacy, resources, and community to nearly 50,000 writers, 500 college and university creative writing programs, and 125 writers' conferences and centers. It was founded in 1967 by R. V. Cassill and George Garrett.
The John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences is a multidisciplinary college within the University of North Dakota (UND) in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The school was formed in 1968. The majority of the school's fleet of over 120 aircraft is based at nearby Grand Forks International Airport and is the largest fleet of civilian flight training aircraft in North America. UND Aerospace also operates a flight training center at Phoenix–Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Arizona. Today, the school has many aerospace-related programs including commercial aviation, Unmanned aircraft systems operations, air traffic control, airport management, Space Studies, Computer Science, Atmospheric Sciences, and Earth System Science & Policy. Currently, the school has over 500 faculty and 2,000 students making it the second largest of UND's degree-granting colleges. The present dean of the school is Robert Kraus.
The Nickel Trophy is presented to the winner of the currently annual football game between the rival University of North Dakota (UND) Fighting Hawks and the North Dakota State University (NDSU) Bison. The two universities are approximately 76 miles apart on the eastern border of North Dakota. The two schools suspended play in 2003 and resumed play in 2015. In the entire history of the rivalry, the game has never been contested anywhere beside Grand Forks or Fargo.
The National Book Foundation (NBF) is an American nonprofit organization established with the goal "to raise the cultural appreciation of great writing in America." Established in 1989 by National Book Awards, Inc., the foundation is the administrator and sponsor of the National Book Awards, a set of literary awards inaugurated in 1936 and continuous from 1950. It also organizes and sponsors public and educational programs.
Adam Johnson is an American novelist and short story writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel, The Orphan Master's Son, and the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection Fortune Smiles. He is also a professor of English at Stanford University with a focus on creative writing.
North Dakota Quarterly (NDQ) is a literary journal published quarterly by the University of North Dakota. NDQ publishes poetry, fiction, interviews, and literary non-fiction. It was first published in 1911 as a vehicle for faculty papers. After a hiatus during the depression, NDQ began publishing again with a broader focus that gradually came to include stories and poems. Preeminent Hemingway scholar Robert W. Lewis edited NDQ from 1982 until his death in 2013 and published about a dozen special editions focused on Hemingway, as well as a number of special editions focused on China, Yugoslavia, and Native American issues and literature. In 2019, NDQ began being published by the University of Nebraska Press.
The Loft Literary Center is a non-profit literary organization located in Minneapolis, Minnesota incorporated in 1975. The Loft is a large and comprehensive independent literary center and offers a variety of writing classes, conferences, grants, readings, writers' studios and other services to both established and emerging writers.
JLG Architects is an architecture firm that specializes in urban design, master planning and architectural design for sports/recreation facilities, universities, K-12 schools, aviation facilities, medical centers, and mixed-use/multi-family housing. JLG has offices in Minneapolis, St. Cloud, and Alexandria, Minnesota, and Grand Forks, Bismarck, Minot, Williston, and Fargo, North Dakota, Rapid City and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Boston, Massachusetts.
Douglas Kearney is an American poet, performer and librettist. Kearney grew up in Altadena, California. His work has appeared in Nocturnes, Jubilat, Beloit Poetry Journal, Gulf Coast, Poetry, Pleiades, Iowa Review, Callaloo, Boston Review, Hyperallergic, Scapegoat, Obsidian, Boundary 2, Jacket2, Lana Turner, Brooklyn Rail, and Indiana Review.In 2012, his and Anne LeBaron's opera, Crescent City, premiered and received widespread praise. He is currently an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota.
The University of North Dakota College of Arts and Science (A&S) is the liberal arts and sciences unit of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The College of Arts and Sciences was established in 1883, and is the largest and oldest of nine colleges at the University, with over 200 regular faculty members in eighteen departments. The departments are organized into four divisions: fine arts, social sciences, humanities, and math & science. The college currently enrolls approximately 2,100 undergraduate students, about 21% of the University's total undergraduate enrollment. It offers forty-three undergraduate degree programs, fifteen master's programs, and eleven doctoral programs. The college is headquartered in Columbia Hall.
The North Dakota Fighting Sioux controversy refers to the controversy surrounding the now retired nickname and logo of the North Dakota Fighting Hawks a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the athletic teams that represented the University of North Dakota (UND) based in Grand Forks, North Dakota.