Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature

The Puterbaugh Conference on World Literature 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. Five Nobel laureates, Czesław Miłosz, Orhan Pamuk, J. M. Coetzee, Kenzaburo Oe and Octavio Paz, have been honored with a Puterbaugh Conference.

List of Puterbaugh Conference Honorees

Year

Name

Country

Language(s)

1968

Jorge Guillén

Spanish

1969

Jorge Luis Borges

Spanish

1971

Octavio Paz

Spanish

1973

Dámaso Alonso

Spanish

1975

Julio Cortázar

Spanish

1977

Mario Vargas Llosa

Spanish

1979

Yves Bonnefoy

French

1981

Michel Butor

French

1983

Carlos Fuentes

Spanish

1987

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

Spanish

1989

Édouard Glissant

(Martinique)

French

1991

Manuel Puig

Spanish

1993

Maryse Condé

(Guadeloupe)

French

1995

Luisa Valenzuela

Spanish

1997

J. M. G. Le Clézio

French

1999

Czesław Miłosz

Polish

2001

Kenzaburo Oe

Japanese

2002

Roberto Fernández Retamar

Spanish

2003

J. M. Coetzee

English

2004

Nélida Piñon

Portuguese

2006

Orhan Pamuk

Turkish

2008

Bei Dao

Chinese