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 IV, 3:00 - 4:00 pm (choose one)

MFA PANEL: What Would a Masters in Fine Arts Do for Me?, with graduates of North Carolina MFA programs

What would an MFA program do for me? How do I know if I'm ready for an MFA Program? Graduates of some of the fine MFA programs housed in NC universities talk about how they decided to go, what it was like, and what makes their MFA program different from the others.

Catherine McCall's first book, Lifeguarding: A Memoir of Secrets, Swimming and the South, is forthcoming from Harmony Books (July, 2006). A practicing psychiatrist, Catherine holds an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
William Conescu's short stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Manhattan Literary Review, and The News & Observer. William earned an MFA in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University.
Mimi Herman teaches Poetry in the Lesley University M.Ed. program, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. She works as an arts and education consultant and is author of The Art of Learning (NC Arts Council 1998) and stories in Shenandoah, Crab Orchard Review, and Rosebud.

ALL-GENRES: Reading Your Work Aloud: For Sense and Performance, with Karyn Traut

Playwright and director Karyn Traut will coach writers in an essential skill: reading in public. We will talk about public performance, timing, etc., and give tips about the length of sections to read (short!) and how to connect with an audience. Essentially language is a spoken form. Written language is richest when it provokes our minds to "hear" its sounds. Participants should bring a sample of their writing that they'd like to hear read aloud, or that they are preparing to read aloud for an audience.

Karyn Traut is a playwright, producer, director, and occasional actor. She has created a form she calls "literary" performance, combining prose and poetical writings that are written specifically to be read. She received her bachelor's from U.C. Berkeley in 1967 and her MFA in Theater Arts from UCLA in 1970. She is currently working on bringing her play, Saturday's Children, about Thomas Jefferson, to the national television audience.