For lovers of words and God...
The HopeWords Writers Conference, the cornerstone of the organization's inception, is purposefully situated in Bluefield, West Virginia. This conference has brought readers, writers, and thinkers from all over the country and world to “Renew. Refresh. Rewrite your story.”
Purposely situated in Bluefield, West Virginia, HopeWords Writers' Conference wants to equip and encourage you to tell stories of hope. Once a thriving industrial center, Bluefield's own story is one of boom and bust and of slowly rebuilding; the city embodies that gritty hope we all long for.
Born out of this same impulse, HopeWords calls readers, writers, and thinkers to gather among her fog-topped mountains for a weekend of imagining the work of New Creation. Because of this, the conference is intentionally intimate and spare, believing renewal happens in quiet, steady ways.
Bring your story, register today.
Christian Wiman
is the author, editor, or translator of more than a dozen books of poetry and prose, including two memoirs, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer and He Held Radical Light: The Art of Faith, the Faith of Art; Every Riven Thing, winner of Ambassador Book Award; Once in the West, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Survival is a Style- all published by FSG. He teaches religion and literature at Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School.
Dr. Craig Keener
did his Ph.D work in New Testament Origins at Duke University and is known for his work as a New Testament scholar on Bible background (commentaries on the New Testament in its early Jewish and Greco-Roman settings). Well over a million of his thirty-plus books are in circulation and have won thirteen national and international awards.
His award winning, popular-level IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament (now in its second edition [2014], and available in a number of languages) has sold over half a million copies.
Dr. Derwin L. Gray
is the co-founding and Lead Pastor of Transformation Church, just outside of Charlotte, NC. He is also the author of several books, including "How to Heal Our Racial Divide: What the Bible Says, and What the First Century Christians Knew about Racial Reconciliation."
Gray met his wife, Vicki, at Brigham Young University (BYU). They have been married since 1992 and have two adult children. After graduating from BYU, he played professional football in the National Football League for five years with the Indianapolis Colts (1993-1997) and one year with the Carolina Panthers (1998). You can follow him at @derwinlgray on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as www.derwinlgray.com.
Dr. Karen Swallow Prior
is a reader, writer, and professor. She is the author of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis (Brazos, 2023); On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (Brazos 2018); Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist (Thomas Nelson, 2014); and Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me (T. S. Poetry Press, 2012). She is co-editor of Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues (Zondervan 2019) and has contributed to numerous other books. She has a monthly column for Religion News Service. Her writing has appeared at Christianity Today, New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, First Things, Vox, Think Christian, The Gospel Coalition, and various other places. She hosted the podcast Jane and Jesus.
Returning in 2025 are some HopeWords favorites:
Amanda Held Opelt is an author, speaker, and songwriter. She writes about faith, grief, and creativity, and believes in the power of community, ritual, shared worship, and storytelling to heal even our deepest wounds. Amanda has spent 15 years serving in the non-profit and humanitarian aid sectors, and has written for Christianity Today, Premier Christianity, and 100 Days in Appalachia. She lives in the mountains of Boone, North Carolina, with her husband and two young daughters.
Dr. Lewis Brogdon
He has served in numerous positions in undergraduate and graduate institutions like Simmons College of Kentucky, Claflin University, Bluefield University, and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.Brogdon is an accomplished writer. In addition to his forthcoming book The Bible in the Ashes of Social Chaos: An Introduction to Problematic Texts, he is the author of several books such as A Companion to Philemon, The Spirituality of Black Preaching, The New Pentecostal Message? An Introduction to the Prosperity Movement, and Hope on the Brink: The Emergence of Nihilism in Black America..
Brogdon authors numerous articles for both academic and non-academic audiences. He is a regular contributor to Christian Ethics Today, Virginia Capital Connections Quarterly, and Black Politics Today, and he writes newspaper op eds in the Courier Journal and East Hampton Star.
Hannah Anderson
is an author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her works is shaped by the rhythms of rural life and include Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul and most recently Turning of Days: Lessons from Nature, Season, and Spirit and Heaven and Nature Sing. Hannah is currently a student at Duke Divinity School where her studies focus on the intersection of theology and art. You can find more about her work at sometimesalight.com.
S. D. Smith is the author of The Green Ember Series, a million+ selling adventure saga featuring heroic #RabbitsWithSwords. The Green Ember spent time as the number one bestselling audiobook in the world on Audible. He is also the author of the madcap Mooses with Bazookas: And Other Stories Children Should Never Read as well as the fantasy adventure novels co-authored with his son, Jack Zulu and the Waylander’s Key and Jack Zulu and the Girl with Golden Wings. Smith’s stories are captivating readers across the globe who are hungry for “new stories with an old soul.”
Though packed with old school virtue and moral imagination, Smith doesn’t merely create “safe” stories, but bold, daring, truthful tales of light that help shape children who become dangerous—dangerous to the darkness.
Smith is a founder and owner of Story Warren, a publishing, events, and IP development house based in rural West Virginia. Story Warren exists to serve families as “allies in imagination.”
S. D. Smith lives in Grandview, West Virginia with his wife and four kids.
“If you’re being called to write-I can not more highly recommend the HopeWords Writers’ Conference in West Virginia. Thank you for convening such a humble cruciform community, unforgettable days of amazing grace!”
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