Session IV Classes: Fall Conference 2007

Sunday, November 18, 9:00-10:30 am

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE - Panel - From Inspiration to Contract! Writing Children's Books and Getting Them Published, with Carole Boston Weatherford, Louise Hawes, and Jacqueline Ogburn.
Have a picture book or chapter book in mind? A Young Adult book on your computer? A middle-grade novel making the rounds? Whether you write for toddlers or teenagers, this panel will help you understand what editors and publishing houses are looking for. A group of published children's authors will discuss trends, publishing categories, marketing, and submission. No short cuts or magic formulas here, just good plain talk about how to make your manuscript competitive in the rapidly growing field of children's publishing.

FICTION - Making Characters Live on the Page, with Elizabeth Cox.
This workshop will focus on description, action, and dialogue that make a character come alive. I will talk about fiction as an "experience," read a few examples of scenes that show the intricacy and complexity of characterization, then give a short writing assignment. If you choose, you can read your writing assignment aloud to get feedback.

GRANTWRITING - Panel - Grants, Fellowships, and Residencies, with Debbie McGill and panelists Randall Kenan and Roy Jacobstein.
The director of literature grants and programs for the North Carolina Arts Council leads a discussion with award-winning writers on how to get the most out of writing fellowships, residencies and grants that have launched and nurtured many writers' careers. For what should you apply? What gives your application an edge? Writers in all genres will want to come to this panel to learn how the nonprofit world can support their work. Debbie oversees the NC Arts Council's biannual $10,000 fellowships for writers of poetry, prose, plays and screenplays. She also handles the grants that Council offers every year to writers for residencies at Headlands Center for the Arts in California and at The Vermont Studio Center. She works with local arts councils around the state to support the grants they offer to writers and other artists annually.

POETRY - Panel - Publishing with Small Presses and Journals, with Keith Flynn (moderator), Sebastian Matthews, Sheryl Monks and Lauren Mosko.
Most authors, whether they write poetry, fiction or nonfiction, launch their careers by getting published in small presses and journals. This panel will help to clarify the writer's path by giving a sense of the myriad players in the small press landscape. Who are these editors, and what are they looking for? Which contests should you pursue or avoid? What are the do's and don'ts of submitting a manuscript? Flynn is founding publisher and editor of the Asheville Poetry Review, which publishes poems, interviews, translations, essays, historical perspectives and book reviews. Sebastian Matthews edits the Rivendell Journal, which focuses each issue on the literary expression and culture of a particular geographic place (the current issue centers on Southern Appalachia). Sheryl Monks is co-founder, publisher and editor of Press 53, a small publisher of literary fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Lauren Mosko is an editor at Writer's Digest Books and was formerly editor of Novel & Short Story Writer's Market.

ALL GENRES - Panel - DIY Career-Building Through Blogs and Self-Publishing, with Amy Tiemann and panelists author/activist Lyle Estill, travel blogger turned published author Joseph Anderson, and blogger and podcaster Mur Lafferty.
Amy Tiemann, author of the book and the blog Mojo Mom, and panelists will tell you how to build your career, and your reputation as a writer, through blogging and self-publishing. Both can form a bridge to national publishers, national media (her blog landed her on NBC's the Today Show) and other steady-paying gigs such as Tiemann's regular column on the leading technology website CNET.com. Anderson's India travel blog turned into a book, as did Estill's energy blog. Come find out how you can create your own buzz, your own following, without depending entirely on the traditional system of agents and editors to do it for you. Lafferty has been experimenting with creative commons licenses by publishing online.

WRITING MARATHON - Observation: Writing En Plein Air , with Valerie Nieman.
Artists traditionally take their easels out to the woods and fields to capture life. If the weather is favorable, we’ll take a five-minute stroll from the Hawthorne Inn to the grounds of Old Salem and the Salem College Campus. We’ll observe people and places as well as the natural world, and will use starter questions and exercises in observation. If the weather is cold and/or wet, we’ll still focus on observation as an inspiration to writing -- the session will use works of art, artifacts, old photos and postcards as the starting points for prose or poetry.