The 12th annual Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference opens Friday at Land’s End Resort. Public events include a reading by keynote speaker Naomi Shihab Nye at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Mariner Theatre and public readings by presenting faculty at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Alice’s Champagne Palace and 7:30 p.m. Monday at Land’s End Resort. For more information, visit writersconference.homer.alaska.edu. Last-minute registration may still be available at the door for a fee of $450. Registration is 3 to 8 p.m. Friday.

Because of illness, Homer poet and writer Eva Saulitis will not be attending the conference. Filling in for Saulitis on the faculty is Healy writer Christine Byl. The author of “Dirt Work: An Education in the Woods,” Byl received her master of fine arts in fiction from the University of Alaska Anchorage. Her prose has appeared in Glimmer Train, The Sun, and Crazyhorse, among other journals. Byl has also received awards from Alaska State Council on the Arts, Rasmuson Foundation, Breadloaf and Fishtrap. She lives with her husband and an old sled dog north of Denali National Park outside of Healy, where she owns and operates a small trail design and construction company.

Writers and poets read at these
times and places:

8 p.m. Saturday, Mariner Theatre

Naomi Shihab Nye
Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; seating is limited

7:30 p.m. Sunday, Alice’s Champagne Palace 

John Daniel, Sean Hill, Sara Loewen,
Melinda Moustakis, Nicole Stellon O’Donnell, Christine Byl and Sherry Simpson

7:30 p.m., Monday, Land’s End Resort 

Rich Chiappone, Nora Marks Dauenhauer,
Ann Hood, Nancy Lord, Karen McElmurray, Lee Ann Roripaugh, Peggy Shumaker and Deb Vanasse 

All events are free and open to the public. Book signings will follow.