Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature

The Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature (or Puterbaugh Festival of World Literature and Culture[1] ) is an annual conference presented by the magazine World Literature Today and the University of Oklahoma. The conference began in 1968 as the Oklahoma Conferences on Writers of the Hispanic World. Since 1978 it has been endowed by the Puterbaugh Foundation of McAlester. At that time, the breadth of the conference was enlarged to include French literature. Since 1993, the conference has covered all world literatures.

Each year, the conferences bring a renowned author to Norman, Oklahoma for a series of lectures, seminars and symposia. The lectures are free and open to the public. Papers presented at the conference are then published in World Literature Today. Seven Nobel laureates, Czesław Miłosz, Orhan Pamuk, J. M. Coetzee, Kenzaburō Ōe, Octavio Paz, J.M.G. Le Clézio, and Mario Vargas Llosa have been honored with a Puterbaugh Conference.[2]