Fiction at NCWN's 2018 Spring Conference
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GREENSBORO—In most fiction, characters enter scenes, face conflict, and work toward the resolution of that conflict. There are as many approaches to this formula as there are writers in the world, but character and scene remain the twin engines of storytelling.
The North Carolina Writers' Network 2018 Spring Conference happens Saturday, April 21, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Registration is now open.
Emerging fiction writers, or those who want to sample a broader selection of classes, may register for classes in both the morning and afternoon sessions.
Heather Bell Adams, whose debut novel Maranatha Road was published in 2017 by Vandalia Press, will lead the session "Essentials of Scene-Crafting (fiction)."
A good scene does a lot of heavy lifting by immersing the reader in the fictional world, introducing characters and their innermost concerns and propelling the story forward. What essentials should we keep in mind to ensure our scenes are as powerful as possible? In this workshop, attendees will look at scenes from novels or short stories to see what makes them successful. Then they'll engage in prompt-driven exercises to craft their own story-building blocks.
"Writing the Character You Know Best: The Strengths and Pitfalls of Autobiographical Fiction " will be led by David Halperin, author of Journal of a UFO Investigator: A Novel (Viking Press, 2011) and five nonfiction books on Jewish messianism and mysticism.
Beginning fiction writers often start out with stories that are fictionalized versions of experiences they’ve actually had. This can give your work a compelling solidity and authenticity; it also can impose shackles from which your writing needs to be freed. In this workshop, registrants will share about their experiences writing in this way, and explore strategies for keeping the strengths without the pitfalls.
Finally, "Cinematic Storytelling Techniques for All Writers" with Susan Emshwiller, a produced screenwriter and co-writer of the film Pollock, is sure to benefit any writer regardless of what genre he or she writes in.
Whether you write novels, short stories, memoirs, poems, or plays, the tools and tricks of screenwriting can enrich your storytelling dramatically. Conferencegoers will see film clips, do prompt writing, and learn tips on effective exposition, dialogue, theme, the power of reactions, creating mystery by withholding information, show-don’t-tell, how to hide setups for surprising payoffs, writing with “shot-sizes” to invigorate your work, and more.
Additional conference programming includes "Lunch with an Author" (only available to those who pre-register); faculty readings and open mics; and the fourth annual Slush Pile Live! where poetry and prose will be read aloud in two rooms in front of panels of editors and publishers, who will raise their hands as soon as they hear something in the pieces that would make them stop reading if they came across the submission in a slush pile.
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.
Announcing the Winners of 2018 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition
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WILMINGTON—Three North Carolinians, Network members all, took top honors in the 2018 Rose Post Creative Nonfiction Competition.
Elaine Thomas of Wilmington won First Prize for her essay “Upper Outer Quadrant.” Thomas will receive $1,000, and Ecotone will consider her essay for publication.
“‘Upper Outer Quadrant’ is stylish, observant, and thoughtful, a consideration of the human relationships that both cause and result from language—by which I mean all of them,” said final judge Benjamin Rachlin, author of the new book Ghost of the Innocent Man. “The essay moves readers to consider more deeply a vocabulary that most of us take for granted.
“Take for granted—a curious idiom, it occurs to me now,” Rachlin said. “To grant, meaning: to acknowledge as true. But also, to grant, meaning: to give as a gift. To take for granted. You can see what this essay has done to me. It’s an essay that squints carefully at words, that lifts each one and holds it to the ear, like a found seashell. It’s an essay that examines itself even as it unfolds, that—to borrow a phrase—makes ‘intimate strangers’ of us all.”
Thomas, a North Carolina native, has had a career that spans journalism, technical writing, and higher education communications as well as hospital chaplaincy. She directed college communications offices and edited alumni magazines for St. Andrews University, Green Mountain College in Vermont, and Hampshire College in Massachusetts. She holds degrees from St. Andrews and Duke Divinity School, with additional creative writing study at Green Mountain and Goddard College.
Virginia Ewing Hudson of Raleigh won Second Place for her essay “Seven Swims in Falls Lake” and will receive $300.
“‘Seven Swims in Falls Lake’ is elegantly told and innovatively structured, a love letter not only to a place but to its inhabitants—human, plant, and animal; organic and invasive; expected and surprising,” Rachlin said. “The essay is as vibrant and dynamic as its setting.”
Hudson teaches cello at Meredith College. She has won the 2017 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize and The Woman’s Writing Award, and her work has been published in The Thomas Wolfe Review, Firefly Ridge Magazine, Wildflower Muse, and The News and Observer in Raleigh. She studied at Interlochen Arts Academy, the University of Texas at Austin, and UNC School of the Arts.
“Growing Up Ugly,” by Bahama’s Jane Shlensky, came in Third. Shlensky will receive $200 in prize money.
“‘Growing Up Ugly’ offers a moving series of contrasts,” Rachlin said. “An adult considers the child she once was. A scholar faces the unknowable. An independent thinker confronts a thoughtless collective. A political activist resolves for personal change. Yet the essay casts these conflicts not as liabilities but as opportunities. It makes one wonder: perhaps only by acknowledging limitations might a person also realize his or her potential.”
Shlensky, a veteran teacher and musician, has recent poetry in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Writer’s Digest, Pinesong, Southern Poetry Anthology: North Carolina, Kakalak, and Poetry Market. The North Carolina Poetry Society has twice nominated her poems for a Pushcart Prize, and her short fiction pieces have been finalists in the Press 53, Doris Betts, and Thomas Wolfe contests. Jane’s chapbook Barefoot on Gravel (2016) is available from Finishing Line Press.
Sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network and administered by the creative writing department at the University of North Carolina at 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.
Benjamin Rachlin grew up in New Hampshire. He studied English at Bowdoin College, where he won the Sinkinson Prize, and writing at UNC-Wilmington, where he won Schwartz and Brauer fellowships. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Virginia Quarterly Review, TIME, Pacific Standard, Orion, LitHub, and Five Dials. His first book, Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption, is available now from Little, Brown & Company.
Ecotone’s mission is to publish and promote the best place-based work being written today. Founded at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in 2005, the award-winning magazine features writing and art that reimagine place, and our authors interpret this charge expansively. An ecotone is a transition zone between two adjacent ecological communities, containing the characteristic species of each. It is therefore a place of danger or opportunity, a testing ground. The magazine explores the ecotones between landscapes, literary genres, scientific and artistic disciplines, modes of thought.
Rose Post worked for the Salisbury Post for fifty-six 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.