Course Descriptions

8:00–9:00 am: Registration Opens

8:30 am – 5:00 pm: Exhibit and Book Sales Open

9:00–10:00 am: Keynote Address by Michael Parker

Michael Parker is the author of eight novels and three collections of stories. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Five Points, the Georgia Review, The Southwest Review, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Oxford American, New England Review, Trail Runner, Runner’s World, and Men’s Journal.  He has received fellowships in fiction from the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Hobson Award for Arts and Letters, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and the 2020 Thomas Wolfe Prize. His work has been anthologized in the Pushcart and New Stories from the South anthologies, and he is a three-time winner of the O.Henry Award for short fiction. For nearly thirty years, he taught in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Since 2009 he has been on the faculty of the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.  He lives in Austin, Texas.

10:30 am – 12:00 pm: Session I

Creative Nonfiction Master Class: Shaping Life into Art: The Structure of Creative Nonfiction with James Tate Hill [CLASS FULL]

Brian Doyle described the essay as a true story made into art. The true stories we all have, but how do we shape those experiences into work an audience would find compelling? This class will examine a variety of ways this can be done. Whether you’re working on essays or a memoir, the most difficult questions often involve where to begin, what to include, what to leave out, and how to keep readers interested. By examining formal structures, point of view, voice, tone, and other stylistic choices made by leading essayists and memoirists, this course will help you hone the tools to translate life experience into expressions of art.

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 Arial, Calibri, or 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: Radical Revision: Re-Seeing Your Story with Xhenet Aliu [CLASS FULL]

Look at the word revision. No, really look at it. The root words don’t translate to tidy up, or make cleaner, or re-order some scenes so that the conflict arises closer to the introduction of the story.

No, revision means re-vision. To see all over again.

In this master class, we’re going to re-envision our next drafts with the same exploratory tenacity we applied to our first. We’re going to call this process “Radical Revision,” and it will involve engaging in a series of exercises that will ask you to temporarily abandon the narrative roadmaps you’ve already laid out and instead investigate the byways that surround it. In the latter half of the class, we’ll suss through the opportunities you found and discuss how you might directly or indirectly integrate your unexpected discoveries into what we might call a “functional revision”–that is, a more conventional “next draft” of the pieces you’ve been working on. 

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

Poetry Master Class: Writing by Ear (Beyond Rhyme) with Timothy O’Keefe [CLASS FULL]

When I ask my freshman literature students how they know a text is a poem, their most common response is, “It rhymes.” And who can blame them? So many of our early experiences with language include songs, jingles, nursery rhymes, tales, verbal games, children’s verse — forms that showcase the felicitous sounds and patterns that words can make. This sets the stage for a paradox that many aspiring poets eventually encounter: the quality that fueled their initial curiosity and joy in language (rhyming) is not only absent in most contemporary poems, but often discouraged and derided in workshop settings. This class is not a defense of end rhymes or traditional prosody. Instead, it will focus on sonic moves, patterns, and strategies that not only recapture the linguistic play we enjoyed so many years ago, but help our poems mean more because of the sounds they do (or don’t) make. 

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, Arial, Calibri, or 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.

The Business of Books with Abby Freeland

In a brisk 90 minutes, this class will cover it all (almost): the platform a writer may (or may not) need before seeking publication, the different types of publishers, the ins & outs of the publishing house, the life cycle of a book, the query letter, the contract, and the ways that authors can help their publishers publicize their books. All that, and as much Q&A as time will allow.

Formal or Free? (poetry) with Jefferson Holdridge

This workshop will focus on the relationship between traditional forms and free verse. We will share some exercises, mainly about tone, whether in conversational or elevated diction.  We will reflect on what the discipline of form means in both formal and free verse.  Some of the themes might be nature and art, personal versus public, love poems, religious, political, or themes of your choosing.  I expect you to bring your own work so that we could each share a poem and discuss some of these issues.  The emphasis of our workshopping together will be on our shared commitment to poetry and its improvement with the aim of doing so with care and insight.

Writing Dialogue that Snaps, Crackles & POPS! with Leslie Pietrzyk

Good dialogue is much more than simply writing down “what people say.” Learn best practices and tips for crafting dialogue that reveals character, advances story, and enhances voice. This session is especially suitable for fiction writers and memoirists. Questions encouraged!

The Spirit of Place in Creative Nonfiction with Phoebe Zerwick [CLASS FULL]

Fiction writers know well the importance of capturing a sense of place to establish a setting. The spirit of a place is equally important in writing nonfiction, whether that’s history, memoir, or journalism. Zerwick draws on her experience as an author, journalist, and producer of multimedia stories for a workshop that will help writers rethink the meaning of place. The challenge for writers of nonfiction is to evoke that spirit through facts. The workshop will provide practical guidance on how to find these details through direct observation, interviews, and research to bring a place alive for readers.

Adapting Other Genres into Film with Nathan Ross Freeman

Let’s be ready. Let’s be prepared. Let’s get the jump on the demand for your words to be filmed, videoed,  streamed, screened. Screenwriter, playwright, filmmaker, creative writing and spoken word educator Nathan Ross Freeman invites you to discuss, discover, and invent structures for adapting your poem, novel, short story, journal, or memoir into scripts for films & videos.

12:00 – 1:00 pm: Lunch with an Author (or lunch on your own) Sponsored by Blair

Lunch with an Author allows small groups of registrants to enjoy boxed lunches and informal conversation with one of our Spring Conference faculty members. Those who wish to participate in Lunch with an Author must sign up with a particular author when they register for the conference.

This year registrants will have the option of signing up for Lunch with an Author, but bringing their own lunch. We recommend this option for those with food allergies or dietary restrictions.

For those who prefer not to participate in Lunch with an Author, there is a wide range of dining options a short distance from the conference venue.

1:15 – 2:15 pm: Faculty Readings Sponsored by Regal House Publishing

2:30 – 4:00 pm: Session II

Creative Nonfiction Master Class: Shaping Life into Art: The Structure of Creative Nonfiction with James Tate Hill (cont.)—See above

Fiction Master Class: Radical Revision: Re-Seeing Your Story with Xhenet Aliu (cont.)—See above [CLASS FULL]

Poetry Master Class: Writing by Ear (Beyond Rhyme) with Timothy O’Keefe (cont.)—See above [CLASS FULL]

Before You Publish That Book: The Key to Pre-Sales with Zelda Lockhart

This workshop is designed to give you some good practices and practical skills for pre-marketing your book before the release date. How do I grow my reading audience before the pub date? Why are pre-sales so important? What does social media have to do with presales? How do I grow my social media and who should I have as followers? Where can I publish shorter versions of my work before the pub date of the full-length work? The workshop answers these questions and more. Be sure to bring your phone and or your laptop, your questions, and an open mind for learning new self-marketing practices.

Writing the Ancestors (all-genre) with Jacinta V. White [CLASS FULL]

Let’s re-record the narrative! Give a new, fresh voice to re-telling your history, your way! In this workshop, Jacinta White will take you through what she learned in her research for her book, Resurrecting the Bones: Born from a Journey Through African American Churches & Cemeteries in the Rural South.

Whether you’re writing poetry, a short story, a novel, or creative non-fiction, you will be provided tools that will inspire you to dig a little deeper…into your creative genius, archives/historical documents, and what you think you know already. 

In this interactive and generative class, we will read selected work curated by Jacinta, share reflections, and begin a journey that will take you into the next chapter. This session will provide inspiration, poignant tips and questions to consider, writing time, and prompts for you to work with outside of class time. 

Bringing Conflict to the Frame: Managing Multiple Timelines (prose) with Jacob Paul

In this session, we’ll examine the relationship between the different timelines that run through most narrative structure, with a focus on strategies for layering conflict, i.e. plot and character stakes, in each.

The Fantastical Fact: Object, Research, and Obsession in Memoir with M. Randal O’Wain

There is a particle only found in the Antarctic, colloquially called space dust. It is infinitesimal and dissipates the moment it touches the ground. Scientists rifle through controlled samples from deep in the snow and isolate the particle for study, but it does not respond to any known tests. Then after years of work a particle did respond to tests and as suddenly as it appeared it vanished. It was, as it happens, an air bubble and not space dust at all. Another. When the astronaut John Glenn first orbited space he experienced something holy, something so miraculous that it reinforced his already devout belief in God. On one of his three orbits around earth, he moved through a cloud of glowing orbs, bright, “Like fireflies. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said. “Thousands of them.” For years, there was no answer, and John Glenn was left to believe in his visiting seraphim, but we now know that what Glenn saw was his own urine released and immediately frozen in the frigid atmosphere of space.

Emotions are the most difficult thing to write about accurately and without falling into cliché or melodrama. While these facts may not relate to your specific situation, there are bound to be others found within your memories, at your job, from your hobbies that you can use to convey complex emotions in fresh and brilliant ways. With outside research, with obsession, with consideration to the greater concrete world of fact we are allowed some wiggle room when writing about emotions. We all have indirect ways of considering our circumstances and our memories and emotions that may aid our desire to write with unique and fresh language.

Ten Reasons Why Screenplays Fail: How to Identify & Fix Common Storytelling Problems with Dana Coen

This class will use a series of checklists to provide screenwriters with a toolkit that can be used either to improve existing work or avoid common mistakes in new projects.

4:30 – 5:30 pm Open Mic Readings I and II Sponsored by Written Word Media

Sign up at the 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.

5:45 – 6:45 pm Slush Pile Live! Sponsored by Katie Winkler and Teach. Write.

The annual Slush Pile Live! will offer 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. The author’s name should not appear on the manuscript, but the title and the genre should.

Then, at 5:45 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. The author’s name should not appear on the manuscript, but the title and the genre should.