Kentucky Women's Book Festival 2025

 

 The 19th annual Kentucky Women’s Book Festival will feature authors from a wide variety of genres Friday, February 28th - Saturday, March 1st. There will be opportunities to participate in the festival in-person, virtually, and/or hybrid. 

The purpose of the book festival is to bring together Kentucky women and femme writers and their readers to meet, discuss, and share their love and appreciation of the written word. This event is open to all to ALL identities to participate. We encourage students, faculty, staff and the community to participate and engage!

Goals

  • Showcase and highlight the outstanding accomplishments of women and femme writers in and from the Kentucky area
  • Expand the readership of women’s works and encourage those engaged in creative writing in alignment with the University of Louisville Women’s Center mission.
  • Inspire a rising generation of readers and writers as an extension of UofL’s community-wide focus on literacy

University of Louisville Women’s Center Mission

The Women’s Center is committed to challenging and working to dismantle patriarchy, and other systems of oppression through collectively building a gender-equitable campus and greater community.

Applying an intersectional and anti-racist feminist framework, we aim to enhance a sense of belonging and empowerment among women, femmes and gender non-conforming students, staff, and faculty.

The Women’s Center is a place where ALL are welcomed to engage in achieving gender-equity and social justice. In this spirit, we are committed to advocacy, education, empowerment, and action.

 

Proposal Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions for:

  • Featured authors
  • Panel discussions
  • Presentations
  • Literary workshops, etc.
  • We also invite editors, publishers, illustrators, and other literary professionals

The festival will consider books in the following genres, but not limited to:

  • Art and architecture
  • Children’s literature, including picture book, middle grade, and young adult
  • Cookbooks and food writing
  • Fiction — all genres
  • Narrative nonfiction — history, biography, memoir, and essays
  • Poetry

Only ONE title can be submitted as the featured title (can be forthcoming title); all other titles will be considered backlist.

  • We will work with local booksellers to promote and sell your books at the KWBF if accepted to participate in the festival.

Travel & Fees:

The Festival cannot pay authors and presenters to participate. Unless offered by the Festival and agreed to well in advance, authors must commit to assuming the costs of their Festival participation, including travel, meals, and lodging.

The Women’s Center hosts this event as part of the University’s observance of Women’s History Month.

The Kentucky Women's Book Festival 2024 is sponsored by the Women's Center and UofL Libraries.

 

 


2006 - Present

Carridder “Rita” M. Jones was instrumental in founding the Kentucky Women’s Book Festival with the support of the U of L Women’s Center. She was a Louisville author, playwright and historian.  She was also an employee of the Human Resources Department. Her vision was a book festival for and about Kentucky women writers.  The mission is to foster a deeper interest in established Kentucky women authors, while also encouraging beginning writers to continue their work and strive to grow. While some Kentucky festivals feature women authors and others feature Kentucky authors, this festival aims to give voice to Kentucky women authors. Above all, the festival’s founder envisioned diversity--in all its forms—as central to the festival.

 Using Rita Jones’ mission as a guide, the festival organizers’ working definition of “Kentucky women authors” includes women authors living in Kentucky now, and/or those who grew up in Kentucky, and/or those who lived in Kentucky in the past. The 1st Book Festival was held at Spalding University in 2006 and featured novelist bell hooks.  The next year, the festival was held on the University of Louisville campus where it has been since then. There have been numerous authors, playwrights and others with a myriad of genres who have been a part of the festival as opening and keynote speakers; panelists, etc. The festival has been supported by hundreds of university and community individuals in-person and virtually.

2026 will be the 20th Anniversary of the Kentucky Women’s Book Festival.