Registration is still open for the 2012 Squire Summer Writing Residency, July 19-22, at Queens University of Charlotte. Author and NCWN Board Member Jan B. Parker attended back in 2009, and here’s what she had to say about her experience:
My first experience with the Squire Summer Writing Residency occurred in the heat of 2009 on the beautiful campus of Warren-Wilson College in the Swannanoa Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. For those of you who attended, I was your lovely parking attendant. Don’t you remember? I’m the one who told you where to go, and it thrilled me.
I glance back fondly to that summer. Our fiction class, nearly twenty strong, sat in the round with Tommy Hayes, our Guru, and we shared the beginning pages of our work. Tommy held strict reigns on our feedback. He brought us from the level of offering simple personal judgment up to the skill of being able to work good solid critiques. We learned how to clearly care about the truth of one another’s story and thus, how to tend and grow our own. Many of us have been published since then, and many of us remain in contact. In fact, Laura Towne, Jack Lloyd, Danny Johnson, and I, to this day, hang tighter than tight. Four out of twenty’s pretty good odds if you ask me—good odds, good community, good learning, good sharing.
We’re still writing, and we’re doing it un-alone. For this reason, I recommend you park it this year at Queens University in Charlotte for the 2012 Squire Summer Writers Residency, July 19-22. The NCWN will be glad to register you, and—your writing will be thrilled.
Hope to see you there!
Artist and author Jan B. Parker lives and works in Fuquay-Varina, NC. Her publishing credits include: 2009 Press 53 Open Awards Anthology, Main Street Rag Quarterly Journal, MoonShine Review, LitSnack, Grey Sparrow Journal, The Broad River Review and Pear Noir!.
Her awards credits include: 2009 First Place Novella in The Press 53 Open Awards, Honorable Mention in the 2010 Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, Finalist in the 2010 Rash Awards, Gardner Webb University, and Second Place in the 2011 Methodist University Southern Writers’ Symposium Emerging Writers’ Competition.
Jan’s novel Trading Moons is currently placed with literary agent Robin Miura while Jan continues working on her second book and compiling her short stories for a new collection. Jan is an active member of and Trustee on the Board for North Carolina Writers Network. She’s in year three of co-hosting Third Thursday Open Mic at Lazy Lion Books in Fuquay-Varina. This popular monthly event is sponsored by Main Street Rag, Charlotte-based indy press which published The 2011 Best of the Fuquay-Varina Reading Series in October 2011. She has recently begun offering affordable editorial services for the writing community. Please visit Jan on Facebook and LinkedIn.
For more information, and to register, visit www.ncwriters.org.