Spring Conference 2006 was held at Peace College in Raleigh, NC. The conference is over, but we have left this conference information on the site so that you can refer to it as a model of what our Spring Conference is like.

Spring Conference 2006
Saturday, May 20

Session II Classes, 11:15 am - 12:15 pm (all registrants)

PANEL: The Writer's Life
How Five Writers Define Success

Novelist/essayist Peggy Payne, poet/playwright Howard Craft, feature writer/novelist Bridgette Lacy, novelist Lynn York, and essayist/author Carol Henderson share secrets of success and how to cope with the hard stuff.

Peggy Payne is a novelist, nonfiction writer, and private editorial consultant. Her research for her travel writing and novels has taken her to more than 25 countries. Her most recent novel Sister India is a New York Times Notable Book, with film rights optioned by IS Media. She is author of the novel Revelation (screen rights sold to Synergy Films) and a co-author, with Allan Luks of The Healing Power of Doing Good.
Howard L. Craft is a poet, playwright and arts educator from Durham, N.C. He is the author of a book of poems, Across the Blue Chasm, and the four plays, The House of George, The Wise Ones, Tunnels, and The Vet Who Lived Underground: Dispatches from Beneath the Map. Craft is a two-time winner of the North Carolina Central University New Play Project and the recipient of the North Carolina Arts Council Playwriting Fellowship. Craft teaches through the United Arts "Artists in the Schools" program, where he conducts poetry residencies and workshops for 3rd through 12th grade students. He has also teaches writing workshops for adults through the North Carolina Writers' Network and Duke University.
Bridgette Lacy is a feature writer for the News & Observer and a freelance writer for Attaché, Southern Living, the Washington Post, and Meridian magazines. Her novel manuscript, currently being shopped around by her agent, is called The Warm Spot, the story of a savvy reporter unraveling the secrets of her mystery man.
Lynn York's debut novel, The Piano Teacher, was published in March 2004 by Plume. She has been a guest speaker at the American Library Association National Conference, the Eudora Welty Writers' Symposium, and many others. She teaches workshops for writers at the NC Writers' Network and the UNCG CALL program. A second novel, The Winemaker, will be published in 2007.
Carol Henderson's book, Losing Malcolm: A Mother's Journey Through Grief (2001), is "a redemptive memoir about losing a baby and learning to live" (USA Today). Henderson offers workshops around the country in journal writing, crafting memoir, writing from personal experience, and writing to heal.