Join us for the fall 2026 installment of the bi-annual Five Minute Play Festival. These student written, directed and performed pieces start with a prompt on Monday and get performed a short 4 days later.
Free tickets are available via the Watson Box Office.
You are all cordially invited to the Fifth Annual Beverly Lyon Clark Children’s Literature Symposium, commemorating the late researcher, educator, and beloved Wheaton colleague with contemporary scholarship exploring storytelling and materials intended for young peoples. The all-day event begins with light refreshments at 8:30am.
The Children’s Literature Symposium is a yearly tradition that honors the late Professor Beverly Clark (1948-2021), by providing the opportunity for undergraduate students, early-career researchers, and creatives to share their experiences and relationships with children’s literature. The theme for this year’s symposium is trees—representative of growth, roots, family, and life.
Questions? email [email protected]
Original five-minute plays—written, directed, and performed by Wheaton students—are showcased in our biannual festival.
Seniors graduating with a major in Creative Writing and Literature read from their original work. Students will present readings over two evenings April 14 & 21, 2026.
Kate Colby reads from her work including Paradoxx, her new collection of essays. “In Paradoxx, Colby applies her humor and exacting intelligence to teasing out tangles in relationships between memory, signification, and human perception. A one-hundred-day chronicle of a dark period in the author’s life, this tightly-wound lyric essay is also a memoir of growing up in the late 20th century and stumbling into the 21st.” (Essay Press) Colby was a founding board member of the Gloucester Writers Center in Massachusetts, where she now serves on the advisory board. She grew up in Massachusetts and currently lives in Providence, where she teaches at UPenn.
Eleven longer form plays—written, directed and performed by Wheaton students—are showcased in our annual festival. The festival runs over two days with two seatings each day, each seating showcases a different set of plays.
Free or pay-what-you-can tickets are available through the Watson Box Office.
Schiff will read from her most recent book, Information Desk: An Epic (2023) which is situated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she worked at the information desk in her young adulthood. “Nearly 30 years later, Schiff transformed her experiences into an epic poem, expertly weaving its collections of visual art and connections to the world into her life’s journey, material world and imagination.” (Sara Patterson, UChicago News) Robyn’s previous books include A Woman of Property (2016), Revolver (2008) and Worth (2002). She is currently a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and the Director of the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.
The poet, Donna Stonecipher, is a translator, living in Berlin. She is the author of six books of poetry, most recently The Ruins of Nostalgia. This particular book is a series of prose poems remarking on her different nostalgic views on Seattle, her hometown. And juxtaposing that to what nostalgia might mean to Berlin. Germany has a complicated history. And Berlin, in particular, where rebuilding has to account for its very recent history as a divided city.
Longer form plays—written, directed and performed by Wheaton students—are showcased in our annual festival.
Please note: the festival takes place each day, twice a day
Original five-minute plays—written, directed, and performed by Wheaton students—are showcased in our biannual festival.