The 44th Annual University of North Dakota Writers Conference, "A Portrait of an Artist" will run March 19-23.

Each year, literature lovers from all over North Dakota and beyond attend this event to listen to panel discussions, readings and ask questions of internationally prominent authors.

The lineup for this year's authors and artists include Cheryl Strayed, Nick Flynn, Ed Bok Lee, Dorothy Allison, Gary Shteyngart, Mary Jo Bang and Richard Bausch, as well as two-time Oscar nominee and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner.

Each authors will give a public reading during the Conference with time reserved for audience members to pose questions, with a book signing to follow. These readings take place at 4p.m. and 8 p.m., Tuesday through Friday, primarily in the UND Memorial Ballroom. At 8p.m., on Friday, at the Chester Fritz Auditorium, the UND Writers Conference will feature "A Conversation with Tony Kushner" moderated by Jack Russell Weinstein, director of the UND Institute for Philosophy in Public Life and the host of Prairie Public's popular WHY? Radio show.

In addition to readings, the Conference includes three panel discussions, where a group of Conference authors answer questions posed by the moderator and those submitted by the audience. Also, this year, the UND Theatre Arts Department will stage two Tony Kushner plays on Saturday night, March 23. A complete schedule is available athttp://www.undwritersconference.org/wc-schedule.htm.

All sessions are free to attend and open to the public.

There is no need to be familiar with an author's work prior to the session. People who are interested in brushing up on a particular author before the session can pick up books for the 2013 Writers Conference at the UND Bookstore.

Mary Jo Bang

Mary Jo Bang is the author of six books of poems, including The Bride of E (2009), Elegy (2007), The Eye Like a Strange Balloon (2004), The Downstream Extremity of the Isle of Swans (2001), and Louise in Love (2001). Her first book, Apology for Want (1997), was chosen by Edward Hirsch for the 1996 Bakeless Prize. Both Louise in Love and Elegy received the Poetry Society of American's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for a manuscript-in-progress. Elegy also received the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award and was listed as a 2008 New York Times Notable Book. Her translation of Dante's Inferno, with illustrations by Henrik Drescher, was published by Graywolf Press in 2012. Bang's poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Believer, Paris Review, and elsewhere. Her work has been chosen three times for inclusion in the Best American Poetry series. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a "Discovery"/The Nation award, a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University.