Conferences

​Fall 2026 Cormac McCarthy Society Conference

"The World Entire: Cormac McCarthy's Expanding Influence"

 

October 8-10, 2026

Crown Plaza Hotel, Knoxville, TN

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In early fall, we’ll return to the Crown Plaza Hotel in Knoxville for the 2026 Cormac McCarthy Society Conference.

 

The call for paper proposals is officially open!

Please submit one- or two-paragraph proposals to cormacmccarthysociety@gmail.com by June 15.

 

We expect a good amount of interest in the conference, especially given all the exciting projects that will be appearing in the fall (hence the conference’s title!) And so this year, all proposals will be vetted and presenters notified after the deadline has passed.

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Information about registration, hotel rooms, and the conference schedule will be coming soon.

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Our keynoter will be Richard Grant, and Tracy Daugherty will be a featured speaker.

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Richard Grant is the author of a number of books, most recently A Race to the Bottom of Crazy: Dispatches from Arizona and The Deepest South of All: True Stories from Natchez, Mississippi. He is the author of the September 2025 Smithsonian article about Cormac McCarthy’s library, which is the basis for his forthcoming book with Simon & Schuster, tentatively titled Cormac: A Journey into the Private World of a Literary Genius.

 

Tracy Daugherty is the author of biographies of Donald Barthelme, Joan Didion, Joseph Heller, Billy Lee Brammer, and the astronomer and Dante scholar Mary Evershed. His most recent publication is the portrait of a Texas icon, Larry McMurtry: A Life. His biography of McCarthy, Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited, will be published by St. Martin’s Press on October 6, 2026—immediately before we convene in Knoxville!

 

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