PAMLA is excited to announce that our friends over at The Sinclair Lewis Society Conference are sponsoring a virtual conference this summer to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Main Street in 2020 and Babbitt in 2022. The keynote speaker will be James Gambone, co-director and producer of The Life and Loves of Sinclair Lewis. He will be speaking on Thursday, July 14, at 7 p.m. CDT from the newly refurbished Sinclair Lewis Boyhood Home, courtesy of the Sinclair Lewis Foundation. The film has recently won an award from the International Stockholm Film and Television Festival.

There will be a keynote speaker on the evening of Thursday, July 14, followed by several panels the next day, including one each on Main Street and Babbitt. Although the conference is being held virtually, it will align with Sauk Centre’s annual Sinclair Lewis Days. The conference will be held on Zoom. There will be no charge for the conference, but you must register in order to receive the Zoom links. We’re hoping that this format will make it possible for our members throughout the country to be able to participate, regardless of weather or pandemic concerns.

Abstracts are due by June 1, 2022 but you’re welcome to send them in earlier. The papers should run about 15 minutes in length to leave room for Q and A at the end. And we encourage a visual aspect to the presentations. To submit abstracts and for more information, please e-mail Sally Parry at [email protected]. Papers on Babbitt will be considered for the special issue of Midwestern Miscellany that will be published in fall 2022.

In order to register for the conference, send an email to Sally Parry at [email protected]. Please include your full name, email, academic affiliation (if any), and where you’re located geographically (the Zoom sessions will all be Central Daylight Time). The links will be sent out in mid to late June, once the panels have been set.

The Sinclair Lewis Society is planning an in-person conference in Sauk Centre in July 2025 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of Arrowsmith, the novel for which Sinclair Lewis received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.