What do Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Archibald MacLeish, and Robert Hayden have in common? They are among the impressive array of American writers who have contributed to the legacy of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in the last one hundred years. 

To commemorate this esteemed institution’s centennial, Welcome to the Mountain recreates the experience of being in a writerly community that celebrates literature and invests in literary apprenticeship. This volume, edited by Lauren Francis-Sharma and Jennifer Grotz, comprises an extraordinary sampling of work from the historical to the contemporary, including lectures and readings first delivered at Bread Loaf. Its expansive range showcases everything from highly celebrated texts to rarer pieces and insightful musings by Toni Morrison, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, Randall Kenan, Czesław Miłosz, Julia Alvarez, and so many more.

Welcome to the Mountain tells the endless and thrilling stories of how writers become writers and how literary traditions evolve through our conversations with each other. Through this extraordinary book, we invite readers to make themselves at home in the rich landscape of American letters.

About the Editors 

Lauren Francis-Sharma, a Pushcart nominated writer is the author of three novels, Book of the Little Axe, ‘Til the Well Runs Dry, and her most recent, Casualties of Truth, a finalist for the 2026 Carol Shields Prize. Lauren serves as Vice President of the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Jennifer Grotz is a poet, the author most recently of Still Falling. Everything I Don’t Know: The Selected Poems of Jerzy Ficowski, is her most recent book translations, co-translated from the Polish with Piotr Sommer and recipient of the PEN Award for Best Book of Poetry. She serves as the Arthur Satz Professor in the Humanities at the University of Rochester and is the director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conferences.