Recapping the 2025 Puterbaugh Lit Fest

Photo 1: At the closing reception (left to right): Daniel Simon, Guadalupe Nettel, Rosalind Harvey, RC Davis-Undiano, Charles Kenney, and Edurne Pineda / Photo courtesy of the Consulate of Mexico in Oklahoma City

Photo 2: Daria Shchukina (prose runner-up), Lala Mammadova (poetry winner), Lucy Coleman (prose winner), and Aiden Wilson (poetry runner-up) were recognized with the OU Student Translation Prize / Photo by Michelle Johnson

Photo 3: A Green Feather Books pop-up shop, dedicated to books by Guadalupe Nettel and other festival-related titles

The 2025 Puterbaugh Lit Fest, hosted by World Literature Today, took place March 3–4 on the University of Oklahoma in Norman. A variety of public events attracted several hundred attendees from the OU campus and throughout central Oklahoma.

Mexican novelist, short-story writer, and essayist Guadalupe Nettel, the 2025 Puterbaugh Fellow, was honored as the festival’s marquee writer. Rosalind Harvey, Nettel’s principal English-language translator, also took part. In anticipation of Nettel’s visit, Spanish instructor Humberto Medina taught the Puterbaugh seminar devoted to Nettel’s work throughout the spring semester.

Harvey’s talk, “Translating Guadalupe Nettel: El Texto Tomado,” kicked off day one of the lit fest and prompted many questions about translation from the audience. That afternoon, Nettel, Harvey, and Medina took part in a roundtable on contemporary Mexican literature, which took place in a packed room in Kaufman Hall, home to OU’s Department of Modern Languages, Literatures & Linguistics.

On day two, Nettel delivered her keynote talk, “Writing with Light,” followed by Q&A with the rapt audience. Afterward, Edurne Pineda, head consul of the Mexican consulate in Oklahoma City, discussed “Mexico–US Relations in the Current Context” at a luncheon event co-sponsored by OU’s Center for the Americas and WLT.

That evening, at a closing reception, Nettel offered brief remarks, and Consul Pineda paid tribute to Nettel’s achievements as a writer. WLT editor in chief Daniel Simon announced Lucy Coleman and Lala Mammadova as the winners of the inaugural OU Student Translation Prizes.

OU’s Department of Modern Languages, Literatures & Linguistics and the Center for the Americas co-sponsored the festival. Throughout, Green Feather Book Company provided books for attendees to have signed.

Visit puterbaughfestival.org to learn more about the 2025 lit fest, and check out WLT’s YouTube channel to watch archived videos from both days.