For the First Time, Spring Conference Offers Courses (and Scholarships!) for Screenwriters

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Written by: Administrator

Category: Network News

Published: 07 March 2022

GREENSBORO—For the first time ever, the North Carolina Writers' Network Spring Conference will offer a track for screenwriters, including scholarships for writers of the silver screen.

The North Carolina Writers' Network 2022 Spring Conference happens Saturday, April 23, on the campus of UNC-Greensboro and online. While there will be virtual class and program options, both screenwriting courses will be held on-site, in-person only.

Conference registration is open.

Mary M. Dalton will lead "Crafting Characters Round and Flat for the Screen." A late addition to the schedule, this course replaces "Screenwriting 101."

Context is everything. Sometimes characters need to change and grow, but other times characters serve a different purpose, such as pushing up against the arc of another character. Using Callie Khouri’s Oscar-winning and iconic screenplay Thelma & Louise as a case study, this class will examine character as a component of classical narrative structure and explore the limits of that paradigm. The session will include exercises for identifying the right type of character—round or flat—for your story and also provide tools for crafting that character. Reading the screenplay Thelma & Louise, which is widely available online, and seeing the movie in advance would be helpful but not necessary. Syd Field also has a useful analysis of the script in his book Four Screenplays: Studies in the American Screenplay.

Dalton is Professor of Communication at Wake Forest University where she teaches courses focusing on critical media studies and screenwriting. Over the years, she has taught screenwriting to a number of students who populate writers’ rooms on shows you may have seen and whose screenwriting credits appear on films viewed at the theater or streaming at home. She delights in their accomplishments.

"Is This Idea a Screenplay?" will be led by Joy Goodwin.

In this workshop, we'll consider how to decide whether a particular story is a feature-length or series-length idea—or, perhaps, neither. Once that decision is made, what are the next steps in developing and realizing the idea?

Joy Goodwin writes and produces independent films. Her credits include Black Nativity, May in the Summer, and the forthcoming Mabel (2022). She began her career in nonfiction television, winning an Emmy for documentary-writing. She is chair of the graduate screenwriting program at UNC School of the Arts.

Spring Conference is a full day of courses and programming on the craft and business of writing, offering both on-site (in-person) and online sessions. North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Carole Boston Weatherford will give the Keynote Address. Additional sessions include the Faculty Readings, Open Mics, and Slush Pile Live!

For the first time, Elliott Bowles Screenwriting Scholarships also will be available to help aspiring screenwriters attend the Spring Conference. The Elliott Bowles Screenwriters Scholarships are open to applications from any North Carolina resident who has written an unproduced and unoptioned screenplay. For more information, please follow the link above, or e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Register here.

The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to all writers, in all genres, at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.

 

Asheville Writer Wins 2022 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition

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Written by: Administrator

Category: Network News

Published: 04 March 2022

ASHEVILLE—Asheville writer Jasmin Morrell has won the 2022 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition for her essay “All That Might Come.”

Morrell will receive $1,000, and Ecotone will consider her essay for publication.

“Through the act of cooking dinner in her kitchen, the writer connects with a line of North Carolina chefs who came before her,” final judge Josina Guess said of the winning essay. “Travelling through time, the writing stays firmly rooted in place, giving names and faces of past, present, and often overlooked, African American contributors to Appalachian cooking.”

Morrell is a writer and editor interested in narratives centering and celebrating Black and Indigenous presence, food, and art. Her essays are included in Meeting at the Table: African-American Women Write on Race, Culture and Community, The Bitter Southerner, and The Porch Magazine. She is also a contributor to the forthcoming anthology, Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic, edited by Valerie Boyd.

Guess selected “Self-Portrait: A Hybrid of Wild & Domestic” by NCWN member Ashley Memory for second place, saying, “‘Who are you?' a bird asks the writer as she watches herself adapt to new rhythms of work and life. 'I don't know' she responds as she tills and prepares soil to plant grass. Field notes and reflections on adaptation and growth bring the writer closer to an answer.”

Memory lives in southwestern Randolph County, North Carolina, surrounded by the mystical Uwharrie Mountains. She writes for Poets & Writers, NBC THINK, Wired, and Healthline, and is currently working on a memoir about finding love and happiness while living with a chronic illness.

Another Asheville-based writer, Dianne Fecteau, won third place with her essay “Migration.” Guess said of it, “Learning to identify wildflowers helps the writer navigate grief and it prompts her own migration to the Carolina mountains. Trillium takes seven years to reach full maturity and the writer, seven years after her husband's death, finds herself blossoming as a transplant in a new place.”

After a career in finance, one of the Network’s online conference inspired Fecteau to spend time each day working on personal essays, including “Migration.”

Final judge Josina Guess is a writer, mother, farmer, and editor. She is a senior writer for The Bitter Southerner where she served as assistant and managing editor. She's an MFA student in the narrative nonfiction program at the University of Georgia Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Her work is published in Ecotone, Fourth Genre, About Place Journal, and more. She contributed to Wisdom of Communities Volume 4: Sustainability in Community: Resources and Stories about Creating Eco-Resilience in Intentional Community (2018), Fight Evil with Poetry Anthology Volume 1 (2018), Rally: Communal Prayers for The Lovers of Jesus and Justice (2020), and the forthcoming Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic (Lookout Books, Fall 2022). She was born in Alabama, raised in Washington, D.C., studied art at Earlham College, and lived in Philadelphia for over a decade before putting down roots in rural Georgia.

Sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and administered by the creative writing department at UNC Wilmington, the Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition encourages the creation of lasting nonfiction work that is outside the realm of conventional journalism. The contest is open to any legal resident of North Carolina or member of the NC Writers’ Network.

Rose Post worked for the Salisbury Post for 56 years as a reporter, feature writer, and columnist. She won numerous state and national awards for her writing and earned the NC Press Women's top annual award four times. She received the O. Henry Award from the Associated Press three times, the Pete Ivey Award, and the School Bell Award for educational coverage. Nationally, she won the 1989 Ernie Pyle Award, the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Award for human-interest writing, and the 1994 National Society of Newspaper Columnists' Award.

The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.