In 2009 the Tallahassee Writers Association and Florida State University joined forces to co-sponsor the Tallahassee Festival of Books and Writers Conference. Barnes and Noble also joined the partnership to bring a quality book festival to the capital city. When the Leon County Library also decided to kick off their “Big Read” at our conference and B&N arranged to donate a portion of book sale profits to the library, we knew we had the foundation laid for an event beneficial not only to writers, but to all citizens in the Big Bend.

Recent TWA conferences brought such notables to Tallahassee as

• Leonard Pitts, Pulitzer-Prize winning Miami Herald columnist
• David Morrell, novelist of Rambo First Blood fame
• Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist
• Philip Gerard, creative nonfiction guru
• Donald Maass, renowned New York agent
• Lucia Robson, Jeff Shaara, and Don Yaeger, New York Times bestsellers