WRIGHTSVILE BEACH—The 2022 Fall Conference of the North Carolina Writers’ Network will open on Friday, November 18, with a keynote address by Jason Mott, winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction.
Registration for the Fall Conference is open now on ncwriters.org.
Mott, whose bestselling novel Hell of a Book also won the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, also will lead a class on “The Fundamentals of Building a Novel” on Saturday, November 19.
He will be joined on the conference faculty by more than 20 other writers leading classes on the craft and business of writing, from “Cross-Country Flights and Hollywood Nights” to “Escape from Pompeii: How to Write While the World Around You Burns.”
Instructors include acclaimed novelists Wiley Cash, Emily Colin, Clyde Edgerton, Philip Gerard, and Dana Sachs; poets Mark Cox, Melissa Crowe, Gabrielle Brant Freeman, Malena Mörling, and Amber Flora Thomas; journalists Russell Worth Parker and Brandon Sneed; editors Margaret Bauer, KaToya Ellis Fleming, and Emily L. Smith; and many more.
Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, winner of the Whiting Writers Award and a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship, will lead the Master Class in Creative Nonfiction, “The Warp and the Woof.” Author Sayantani Dasgupta will lead the Master Class in Fiction, “How to Move Through a Story,” while Anna Lena Phillips Bell—Ecotone editor, Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet, and square-dance caller—will lead the Master Class in Poetry, “Beautiful Cacophony.”
The 2022 Fall Conference also will include the annual Manuscript Mart with agents and editors from leading agencies and publishers, as well as the Saturday-morning “All Stories Connect” panel discussion, this year with representatives from Writers for Democratic Action.
The Saturday luncheon will feature a talk by humorist Celia Rivenbark, while the Annual Banquet on Saturday evening will feature “North Carolina in Words, Pictures, and Music,” a performance by Bland and Ann Cary Simpson.
“Wrightsville Beach was the site of the Network’s first Fall Conference,” said NCWN Executive Director Ed Southern, “and it remains one of our favorites. We’re excited to bring everyone together back there this year.”
More details and registration are available at ncwriters.org, or by calling 919.308.3228 or 336.293.8844.