Full Schedule with Course Descriptions

**Registration is closed**

ON-SITE CONFERENCE

8:00–9:00 am: Registration Open

MHRA Lobby

8:30 am – 5:00 pm: Exhibits & Book Sales Open

MHRA Lobby

9:00–10:00 am: Keynote Address by Carole Boston Weatherford

Hailed by Huffington Post s a “master of picture book nonfiction,” Carole Boston Weatherford is a Newberry Honor author, New York Times bestseller, and two-time NAACP Image Award winner. Since her 1995 debut, she has published 50-plus books including these Caldecott Honor winners: Freedom in Congo Square, Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. Six of her books have won Coretta Scott King Awards or Honors. A graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at UNC Greensboro, Weatherford was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2020.

10:30 am – 12:00 pm: Session I

Creative Nonfiction Master Class: Writing with Urgency with Belle Boggs**Closed**
Many writing teachers counsel us to save experiences we’re too close to for later—why not wait until you can get some distance and perspective? (I have given this advice myself!) But my experience writing about urgent personal and political issues has also taught me that developing a writing practice around contemporaneous note-taking, research, journaling, and interviews can be a way of producing work that feels urgent and alive. This nonfiction workshop will balance workshop discussion of short pieces with in-class planning for how to energize and sustain a longer nonfiction project. Our focus will be on using observation, research, interviews, and experience to create immersive work that is relevant and necessary.

Please submit up to 1,500 sequential words from a single work, along with your current CV in a separate attachment, on the same day that you register for the conference. Submissions should be saved in an MS Word document, using double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font, with numbered pages, and sent as an attachment to masterclass@ncwriters.org. The Word document’s file name should include your own last name, and the title of the work and your name should appear on the submission itself. If accepted into the Master Class, your submitted work will be shared with other Master Class registrants.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class.

Fiction Master Class: Cause-and-Effect in Fiction with Derek Palacio**Closed**
This course will explore cause-and-effect dynamics within plot development. Through critique of student work and analysis of a few, short published texts, we will examine how cause-and-effect functions in narrative. We will investigate how to build plots that derive from interesting and revealing character choices, and we will seek to gain a better understanding of why cause-and-effect, when judiciously employed, can lead to more complex yet cohesive narrative structures.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class.

Poetry Master Class: River of Time and Art with Laura Mullen**Closed**
We feel ourselves to float now, precariously, uncertainly, in a river of time that seems rapid, forceful, and unruly—it’s all too easy to fear we’ll be thrown out of the boat and submerged. “Poetry,” writes Joy Harjo in her memoir Poet Warrior, “is a tool to navigate transformation.” What better way to move through these straits than with(in) art? This workshop will be generative, there will be exercises and prompts, productive of new poetry, and then (looking at previous work) will also offer strategies for revision, grounded in a recognition of your singular and special powers, with a focus on self-awareness and self-acceptance, as we learn to go with the creative flow and move fearlessly toward the wide open.

Please submit three poems, totaling no more than five pages, on the same day that you register for the conference, along with your current CV in a separate attachment. Poems should be saved in a single MS Word document, using single-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font, and sent as an attachment to masterclass@ncwriters.org. The Word document’s file name should include your own last name, and your name and the title of each poem should appear on the submission. If accepted into the Master Class, your submitted work will be shared with other Master Class registrants.

Each registrant should be ready to handle the intensive instruction and atmosphere of the Master Class.

Query an Agent About Querying Agents with Jamie Chambliss
If you have questions about finding and working with an agent—how to narrow down your search to likely fits, how to write and send a query, and what to expect when an agent says ‘yes’—then this class gives you 90 minutes to ask them. Beginning with an intensive on how to write an effective query, the class then will move into an open Q&A on contemporary agenting and publishing.

Public, Private, and Poetic Place with Charmaine Cadeau
Filmmaker Peter Greenaway stated, “I’ve always been fascinated by maps and cartography. A map tells you where you’ve been, where you are, and where you’re going—in a sense it’s three tenses in one.” This generative writing workshop focuses on exploring our literal and conceptual worlds. How might a poem map a geographical place? A memory? A body? Using exercises that play with the idea of mapping, participants will draft new work that explores real and imagined places.

The Speaking Words: On Writing Dialogue in Fiction with Travis Mulhauser
This session will provide concrete strategies for sharpening your dialogue and strengthening its impact on your fiction. We will look at examples from masters like Elmore Leonard and Charles Portis, while also looking at writers who use dialogue more sparingly, but to equally profound effect. There are elements of good dialogue that cannot be taught—this session will deal with the parts that can be. This is recommended for writers who consider dialogue a particular strength, and writers who consider it a weakness. Good dialogue is about rhythm and word choice and knowing what needs to be said by your characters, but it is also about knowing what not to say. Writers will leave this class with a clearer sense of how they want to use dialogue in their fiction, and with the tools to apply it to their work.

Look Closer: Writing about Objects (all genres) with Julia Ridley Smith
Objects—whether everyday things, family heirlooms, or exquisite works of art—offer rich material for storytelling. The writer Italo Calvino put it this way: “The moment an object appears in a narrative, it is charged with a special force and becomes like the pole of a magnetic field, a knot in the network of invisible relationships. . . We might even say that in a narrative any object is always magic.”

In this multi-genre class, we’ll use familiar objects as a starting point for generating new writing. We’ll read and discuss literature that illuminates our material world, and we’ll consider the range of reactions, memories, stories, and cultural associations objects evoke for us. Creating vivid imagery often begins with paying close attention to what we see, so we’ll practice looking together—examining a few specific objects and writing about them. Finally, you’ll have the opportunity to write about an object that’s personally significant to you.

Crafting Characters Round and Flat for the Screen with Mary M. Dalton
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.

12:00–1:00 pm: Lunch

Under UNCG’s current COVID-19 guidelines, we will not be able to offer Lunch with an Author or any food or beverage at the on-site Spring Conference. If their guidelines change in time, we will give registrants an opportunity to order some sort of on-site lunch. Either way, we will provide all registrants with a list of quick and convenient lunch options within walking distance of the MHRA Building.

1:15–2:15 pm: Faculty Readings

2:30–4:00 pm: Session II

Creative Nonfiction Master Class: Writing with Urgency with Belle Boggs**Closed**
Continued; see above for description.

Fiction Master Class with Derek Palacio **Closed**
Continued; see above for description.

Poetry Master Class: River of Time and Art with Laura Mullen **Closed**
Continued; see above for description.

Presenting Your Book with Charlie Lovett
Whether at a book festival, bookstore, school, or community event book readings are not what they used to be. The public wants more than just an author who stands and reads from their book. Best-selling novelist and playwright Charlie Lovett draws on his background in theatre to deliver what audiences want at author events—whether in person or virtual. In this class he will guide you through techniques you can use to up your game when discussing your work in public.

Talking the Talk (poetry) with Stuart Dischell
This class, open to poets at all levels of skill and experience, will focus on the use of dialogue as a strategic device in poetry.

Manifesting Thisness in Fiction with Caleb Johnson
The critic James Wood writes, “In life, as in literature, we navigate via the stars of detail.” Wood uses the term “thisness” to define any detail that centers our attention with its concretion. In this class we will use excerpts from Wood’s How Fiction Works and Brad Watson’s novel Miss Jane to examine why details matter in fiction. Using these examples as guides, we will mine our own memories to write a fictional scene that possesses thisness via details that are concrete, precise, and evocative.

The Group: How to Form Your Own Thriving Writing Workshop with Duncan Murrell
In a constantly fluctuating publishing economy, in which it sometimes appears that you have to pay to play, many writers are hiring editors to give them the kind of feedback that they might have gotten for free as a member of a writing workshop or writing group. But we all have stories of private writing workshops and groups that began with great intentions but then just kind of petered out—out of disorganization, or personal conflict, or missed deadlines, or just general boredom. In this panel we’ll talk about how to form a writing community and start a workshop that works and is useful: finding your people, developing a purpose for your group or workshop, creating a structure and a set of rules for accountability, talking about the work of others in ways that are both honest and helpful, growing a sense of community, and knowing when it’s time to take your work to the next level.

Is This Idea a Screenplay? with 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?

4:30–5:30 pm: Open Mic Readings I & II

Sign up at the conference registration table
Sign up at the conference registration table if you would like to share your work. Only twenty reading slots, of five minutes each, will be available, first-come, first-served.

5:30–6:30 pm: Slush Pile Live!

Slush Pile Live! offers both poetry and prose in two rooms so that more attendees have a chance to receive feedback on their writing. Have you ever wondered what goes through an editor’s mind as he or she reads through a stack of unsolicited submissions? Here’s your chance to find out.

Beginning at 4:00 pm, attendees may drop off either 300 words of prose or one page of poetry in the room of their choice (location TBD). The author’s name should not appear on the manuscript, but the genre should.

Then, at 5:30 pm, a panel of editors will listen to the submissions being read out loud and raise their hand when they hear something that would make them stop reading if the piece were being submitted to their publication. The editors will discuss what they did and did not like about the sample, offering constructive feedback on the manuscript itself and the submission process. All anonymous—all live! (Authors can reveal themselves at the end, but only if they want to.)

Submissions should be double-spaced, 12-point, Times New Roman font. No names should appear on the submissions.

ONLINE

9:00 am–10:00 am: Keynote Address by Carole Boston Weatherford

(Livestreamed from UNCG)

Hailed by Huffington Post as a “master of picture book nonfiction,” Carole Boston Weatherford is a Newberry Honor author, New York Times bestseller, and two-time NAACP Image Award winner. Since her 1995 debut, she has published 50-plus books including these Caldecott Honor winners: Freedom in Congo Square, Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement, and Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. Six of her books have won Coretta Scott King Awards or Honors. A graduate of the Creative Writing MFA program at UNC Greensboro, Weatherford was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in 2020.

10:30 am – 12:00 pm: Session I

In Flux(us) (all genres) with Steven Sherrill—Online Only
“I’m fleshing out the idea. For now, my plan is to focus on process over product, and the inherent range of potential within almost every idea.”

Hitting a Home Run: Pitching to & Getting Published in Magazines with Rachel Priest—Online Only
So you’ve finally finished the story draft you’ve been working on for months. Or you recently met a person or have been to a place you think the world should know about and want to tell their story. You’ve found a few publications that you think would be a good fit for your work, but now you’re wondering what to do next.

If you’ve ever wanted to get your writing published in a magazine but didn’t know where to start or what to expect, this class is for you. This 90-minute session will focus on how and where to pitch your stories, what to expect if your story gets picked up, and what to do if your piece isn’t accepted.

12:00–1:15 pm: Online Picnic Hosted by Michele T. Berger

Online Only

1:15–2:15 pm: Faculty Readings

Livestreamed from UNCG

2:30–4:00 pm: Session II

The Sound of Prose with Maegan Poland—Online Only
In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein writes about her dog and how “listening to the rhythm of his water drinking made her recognize the difference between sentences and paragraphs, that paragraphs are emotional and that sentences are not.” What might make a paragraph emotional? How do we find and enhance the energy of a sentence or a paragraph? How can syntax and sound intensify a description or an internal monologue? We will close-read passages from stylistically distinct authors and consider the elements and patterns that captivate us.

What Publishers Really Want from Authors: Building an Audience Before Your First Book Comes Out with Meg Reid—Online Only
You likely worked for years to write your book and get it accepted by a publisher. Now what? Most authors are more comfortable writing their book than marketing it. This class will focus on what publishers want to see authors do in the months before publication to help get the word out. Whether you’re an author with a traditional large publisher or smaller indie press or you’re self-publishing and responsible for all your own publicity, this workshop will tell you how to work in tandem with your publisher to support your book and lay the foundation for a successful book release.

4:30–5:30 pm: Open Mic Readings I & II

Online Only

5:30–6:30 pm: Slush Pile Live!

(Livestreamed from UNCG)

A panel of editors will listen to short submissions being read out loud and raise their hand when they hear something that would make them stop reading if the piece were being submitted to their publication. The editors will discuss what they did and did not like about the sample, offering constructive feedback on the manuscript itself and the submission process. All anonymous—all live!