Mennonite/s Writing 10: An International Conference

June 13–15, 2025 @ Canadian Mennonite University

In her 2020 study, Making Believe, Magdalene Redekop attributes the surge of creative writing by North American Mennonites in the late 20th century to the “many Mennonites [who] have been willing to play and be serious at the same time.”

Indeed, from the martyr ballads and trickster tales of the early Anabaptists through centuries of sermons, hymns, and diaries to the bestselling fiction and poetry of today, creative writing among Mennonites has always been a type of deeply serious play. At once a form of labour and of entertainment, Mennonite literary work continues to be a source of community and transgression; a means of memory and of revision; a practice of devotion, resistance, lament, and joy.

In keeping with the field’s long-standing practice of working across creative and critical boundaries, Mennonite/s Writing Ten will feature presentations that engage with “words at work and play” across a variety of academic disciplines and creative genres.