NCWN

The annual event, cosponsored by UNCG’s Center for Creative Writing in the Arts, draws writers from across North Carolina and beyond for intensive workshops in fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting, poetry, and publishing, led by distinguished writing faculty. This year’s conference will also feature a Publishing Panel with book and journal editors, a Faculty Reading, an Open Mike Reading for conference attendees, and “Lunch with an Author,” in which attendees share lunch and personal conversation with one of the authors on the faculty.

In 2004, Fred Chappell retired after 40 years in the UNCG English department. During this time he published 26 books of poetry, fiction, and critical commentary. His awards include the Sir Walter Raleigh Prize, the North Carolina Award in Literature, the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, eight Roanoke-Chowan Poetry Awards, the Prix de Meilleur des Livres Etrangers (Best Foreign Book Prize) from the Academie Francaise, the Mihai Eminescu Medal from the Republic of Moldova, and the Thomas Wolfe Prize. He was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2006. He served as North Carolina’s Poet Laureate from 1997 until 2002. His latest book of poetry is Shadow Box, published in 2009 by LSU Press. His latest work of fiction, Ancestors and Others: New and Selected Stories, was published last year by St. Martin’s Press. He lives with his wife, Susan, in Greensboro.

Conference participants may select from a variety of half- and full-day workshops, including “Inspiration Station,” a poetry workshop with poet and Asheville Poetry Review editor Keith Flynn; “Gimme a Break: Breaking Into Nonfiction Publishing,” with author and publisher Malcolm Campbell; “The Morning After: Reclaiming Your Life as a Writer” with NC State University professor Sheila Smith McKoy; “The North Carolina Screenwriter, and Screenwriter as Filmmaker” with Nathan Ross Freeman, the director of the award-winning feature film Mr. Bones; and “The Greatest Writing Prompt Ever” with poet Scott Owens.

Other instructors include Holly Goddard Jones, Chris Roerden, and John McNally on fiction, and Cynthia Nearman and NCWN executive director Ed Southern on nonfiction.

Registration for the conference—made possible with support from UNC Greensboro and the North Carolina Arts Council—is $99 for Network members, $150 for nonmembers.

To register, call 919-251-9140 for more information.