The academic symposium of the Horton Foote American Playwrights Festival received papers on a range of topics for the November 2009 event on the campus of Baylor University. The Festival features a lively mix of theatre productions, staged readings, professional panels, guest artists, and scholarly papers.

Previous honorees were Horton Foote (2003), Romulus Linney (2005) and Tina Howe (2007). The 2009 festival will celebrate Craig Wright, the award-winning contemporary author of The Pavilion, Recent Tragic Events, The Unseen, and television projects such as Six Feet Under and Dirty Sexy Money.

The academic symposium will include panels on Craig Wright, Horton Foote, and a variety of other topics related to American playwrights, American drama, and theatre practice in the United States. Possible subjects for the 2009 festival included:

•The plays of Horton Foote
•The television and film work of Horton Foote
•The plays of Craig Wright
•The television work of Craig Wright
•Playwrights as screenwriters
•New play development in the U.S.
•Issues of teaching playwriting in U.S. higher education
•Historical considerations of the role of the playwright in the U.S.
•Themes of America in plays by U.S. authors
•Regionalism and the U.S. playwright
•Librettists and composers of American Musical Theatre
•U.S. playwrights and U.S. critics
•Issues of faith in American drama