Deadline to Submit a Conference Proposal: Thursday, April 30, 2026
6th Annual Corridors: Blue Ridge Writing & Rhetoric Conference
Saturday, September 19, 2026
Radford University | Radford, Virginia
Conference Theme
Writing Home: Where the Power of Place Meets the Page
Description
Writing and rhetoric graduate students, instructors, and scholars in the Appalachian region are invited to submit a proposal for the Corridors: Blue Ridge Writing & Rhetoric Conference to be held on Saturday, September 19, 2026, at Radford University in Virginia. This year’s theme, “Writing Home: Where the Power of Place Meets the Page,” invites us to explore how the concept of home shapes our identities, pedagogies, research, and creative work.
Traditionally, the phrase “writing home” suggested sending a letter back to where we felt we belonged. Today, the phrase resonates differently. Many of us are asking what home even means, how we write from and toward it, how our students encounter that question in the classroom, and what it means to call a place your “home” in the first place.
For those who teach writing, the idea of home often emerges in assignments about identity, place, language, or community—to name a few. For others, home is a location of longing, memory, conflict, return, or simply a feeling. In the Appalachian region especially, scholars and writers have long wrestled with what it means to belong to a place that is both deeply loved and often misunderstood.
Therefore, this conference invites conversations about how the concept of home appears across our work, including place-based and community-engaged pedagogies, service-learning partnerships, interpretive or public writing projects, explorations of belonging and displacement, and creative representations of the places that have shaped (or unshaped) us.
“Writing Home” encourages contributors to reflect on:
- How we teach the idea of home, place, and belonging in first-year writing, professional/technical/business writing, and upper-level courses.
- How students who are not from Appalachia engage with Appalachian place, identity, and narrative.
- How creative, rhetorical, and community-based writing practices reveal what “home” means—or why it eludes us.
- How writing can help us build, critique, reclaim, or reimagine home in personal, scholarly, and public contexts.
- What role writing plays in giving back to our “home,” and what responsibility we have as writing teachers to our communities.
Questions to Consider
Potential contributors may want to consider the following questions:
- What does “home” mean in a regionally grounded writing classroom?
- How does the traditional notion of “writing home” inform or contradict modern ideas of the phrase?
- How do writers use place, memory, or personal history to construct a sense of home on the page?
- How can writing instructors introduce concepts of home and identity in first-year composition?
- What does it look like to teach the idea of “home” in professional/technical/ business writing courses?
- How can place-based, public, and service-learning projects help students better understand where they live or where they come from?
- What challenges arise when students’ sense of home conflicts with institutional, disciplinary, or cultural expectations?
- How do we engage students who are not from Appalachia in meaningful conversations about place and belonging?
- In what ways does creative work, such as poetry, fiction, nonfiction, multimodal storytelling, shape the narrative of home in Appalachia?
- How do marginalized, displaced, or diasporic voices redefine what counts as “home” within or beyond the region?
- What can public-facing projects (e.g., interpretive signage, community archives, oral histories, public art, monument studies) teach us about the rhetorical construction of home?
Proposal Submissions
Please submit a 300-word proposal (plus a 50-word abstract for the conference program) related to the theme by Thursday, April 30, 2026. References are not included in the word count. Even so, please keep references to a minimum; instead, concentrate on your topic’s connection to the theme, importance/relevance, and key takeaways. Proposals can focus on classroom practices, research, theory, service-learning partnerships, creative works, community-engaged projects, faculty development, personal narratives, case studies, literature reviews, analyses, commentaries, and reflections. Sessions are 75 minutes. Presentation sessions include at least 15 minutes for questions and answers. The interactive roundtable discussions and workshops have the full 75 minutes. All rooms are equipped with a computer, projector, audio, document camera, and whiteboard. Presenters should submit only one proposal in one of the following four formats:
- Panel Presentation: 3-4 presentations of 15 minutes each.
- Individual Presentation: 15-minute presentation (that will be combined into a panel by conference organizers).
- Roundtable Discussion: 15 minutes of introductory framing by the leader(s), followed by a facilitated discussion among roundtable participants and attendees (up to four roundtable participants).
- Workshop: A participatory session that engages attendees in an active-learning activity. Proposals should be explicit about the activity.
Open-Mic Session
This optional Open-Mic Session is an opportunity for attendees to share an original creative work related to the themes of home, place, belonging, or displacement (e.g., a poem, a song, a short story, an essay, an excerpt from a fiction or non-fiction book of any type, a scene from a play or script, a profile, a magazine or newspaper article, a journal entry, personal narrative, a letter, a sermon, a blog post, a speech, a video). An original reading/performance can be up to seven minutes long and can include others as long as one of the participants originated the work. Presenters submitting a proposal type listed above can also participate in this open-mic session if they wish. A separate 100-word description of the reading/performance, including the title of the work, is required.
Proposal Submission Form
Submit your proposal using this Conference Proposal Submission Form by Thursday, April 30, 2026.
Timeline
Call for Proposals Released: February 15, 2026
Conference Proposals Due: April 30, 2026
Notifications Sent: May 25, 2026
Confirmation of Presenters Due: June 15, 2026
Registration Opens: July 1, 2026
Draft Program Available: July 1, 2026
Final Program Available: August 1, 2026
Registration Closes: September 12, 2026
Conference: September 19, 2026
About the Conference
Corridors is a free, in-person, one-day (8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.) regional conference; however, registration is required to attend. Breakfast nibbles will be provided on the day of the conference, but attendees will be on their own for lunch, dinner, beverages, snacks, travel, and lodging. An opportunity to gather in groups for dinner will be available and will be hosted by a faculty member or graduate student from Radford University’s School of Writing, Language, and Literature. Free on-campus parking will be available.
Conference Website
Visit the conference website for information about the keynote speaker, lunch and dinner options, lodging options, schedule-at-a-glance, and directions to Radford.
Contact
Have questions? Please contact Laura Vernon at lvernon.
Sponsors
The 2026 Corridors: Blue Ridge Writing & Rhetoric Conference is sponsored by Radford University’s School of Writing, Language, and Literature and College of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences.
Laura Vernon, Ph.D.
Professor, Professional Writing
School of Writing, Language, and Literature
Radford University
PO Box 6935
Radford, VA 24142
lvernon
Hemphill Hall 4131
CFP 2026 Corridors Blue Ridge Writing Rhetoric Conference.pdf