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Y’all Come Back Now: NCWN Fall Conference Scheduled for November Return

* Note: We are a Writers’ Network, writing about our writing conference, so please pay attention to our careful use of conditional language.

DURHAM—The North Carolina Writers’ Network has planned an in-person Fall Conference, scheduled to take place November 19 – 21 at the Sheraton Imperial in Durham-RTP.

Nearly 30 authors, editors, agents, and publishing professionals have agreed to be a part of this conference, including North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green; novelists Heather Bell Adams, Barbara Claypole White, Mesha Maren, Karen Tucker, and Daniel Wallace; nonfiction writers Cat Warren, Marianne Gingher, and Georgann Eubanks; poets Dasan Ahanu, Tyree Daye, Mimi Herman, Fred Joiner, and Han VanderHart; and many more.

For more information, and to register, click here.

The conference as planned will feature more than 20 classes on the craft and business of writing, spread across five sessions in two days, in addition to three multi-session Master Classes, a Manuscript Mart and a Critique Service, and three general-session panel discussions: “From Lore to Lit and Back Again,” with the NC Folklife Institute; “Community Journalism,” sponsored by PEN America; and the ever-popular (and self-explanatory) “Agents & Editors.”

And for the first time ever, select Fall Conference programs will be available through online livestream for those unable or unwilling to attend the conference in person.

“We’ve had to wait far too long to be together again, at a conference, in community,” said NCWN Executive Director Ed Southern. “We’re thrilled and grateful that we at last can plan one, and realistically hope that it comes to pass.

“We recognize that the pandemic is not over, and that circumstances may require us to move the conference online yet again,” Southern said. “If we are able to hold the conference in-person, we will follow—if not exceed—all CDC and state safety guidelines regarding gatherings. We want to see our fellow writers again, but we want them to be safe most of all.”

More details and registration can be found here.