Saturday, October 21, 2023
9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. CDT
Please note that all times are in Central Time Zone
Early Bird (through 9/30): $49
Regular (10/1-10/20): $69
Tickets are limited, so make sure to register early! Even if you can’t attend the whole event, recordings of all sessions will be made available to registered attendees after the event.
Conference Details & Schedule
9:00am-9:45am: Keynote: Write Great, Get Finished, Get Published
Marcia Bradley, MFA, seeking a “second life,” moved from Los Angeles to study at Sarah Lawrence College earning her MFA in 2017 after receiving her BA from Antioch University. Marcia believes many people face untenable situations causing life altering choices to be made; her novel and published pieces focus on these themes. Her debut novel, The Home for Wayward Girls, published by HarperCollins in 2023, is about one young woman’s plight living on a ranch that is part of the Troubled Teen Industry—programs which have spread across the country offering residential and wilderness camps that claim to fix misbehaving youth.
Marcia received a Bronx Council on the Arts/New York City BRIO Award for Fiction. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Review of Books, Two Hawks, Eclectica, Drunk Monkeys, The Writing Disorder, Hippocampus, and The Capital Gazette among others. A native of Chicago, Marcia teaches at The Writing Institute Adult Education Program at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in the Bronx. Click here for The Associated Press’s review of her book. Learn more at: https://marciabradley.com/
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10:00am-11:00am: Workshop: Narrative Authority & the Power of Voice with Molly Dwyer
Narrative Authority comes from our sense that the writer is fearless and in control of the story she’s telling. We will look at text by several authors to see what they’re doing that creates the power of voice and discuss why and how the text is working. Using visual prompts, we’ll write two short pieces and share them, attempting to identify the sound of our own voices.
Molly Dwyer, PhD, has taught creative writing at Mendocino College for four years. She works as an editor, writing coach and workshop facilitator. She has an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and a PhD in Humanities from the California Institute of Integral Studies. Molly Dwyer’s debut novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein, was nominated for the Northern California Book Award in Fiction and won the Independent Publishers Book of the Year Award and an Indie Book Award for Historical Fiction. Molly has been honored for “Writing Women Back into History” by the National Women’s Political Caucus of Mendocino County. She’s the Founding President of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast, a branch of the California Writers Club. Learn more at https://whiskeydogpress.wordpress.com
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11:15am-12:15pm: Workshop: Slaying the Dragon with Ann Putnam
Flannery O’Connor warns beware of the dragon, lest he devour you. Virginia Woolf impassions us to kill the angel lest she kill you. The dragon, the angel, is the beast within that stops us in our tracks. It comes out of nowhere, or creeps up on us in our sleep. Suddenly we can’t write a word. Or a word good enough. This workshop gives us weapons to slay that dragon before it slays us.
Ann Putnam, PhD, is an experienced writer, educator, and scholar with a passion for creative writing. Upon completing her dissertation, she felt her creative spark extinguish. However, a family trip to Glacier Park, shortly after a grizzly bear attack, reignited her creativity. Crafting “Zoe’s Bear,” a short story born from her maternal fears, rekindled her creative journey. Balancing academic writing, teaching, and creative endeavors proved challenging, but her love for the latter triumphed. Ann’s instructional experience includes the University of Washington and the University of Puget Sound, as well as workshops and presentations at various writer’s conferences and literature associations. Learn more at www.annputnamwriter.com.
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12:30pm-1:45pm: Q&A with our 2022 Sarton & Gilda Award Winners
Pre-recorded session moderated by SCN President, Len Leatherwood.
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2:00pm-3:00pm: Workshop: Turning Heartbreak into Story with Patricia Grayhall
This workshop will help writers understand the “why” of their story, the purpose of memoir, its structure and focus. We will discuss the roles of scene and dialogue, setting, context, speculation, emotional truth, seminal events, transformation, reflection, and takeaway using examples. We will also discuss potential external consequences of writing memoir and the importance of support when reliving painful events.
Patricia Grayhall, MD, is a retired medical doctor and author of Making the Rounds; Defying Norms in Love and Medicine that garnered a starred review in Kirkus Reviews, a feature article in Kirkus Magazine and was listed among Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Books of 2022. Her book was a finalist in the American Book Fest “Best Book” Awards and two first-place Firebird Awards. She’s published articles in Queer Forty, The Gay and Lesbian Review, The Millions, Lesbian Game Changers, and Seattle Magazine. NPR recently interviewed her. Patricia lives with the love of her life on an island in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys other people’s dogs, big nature, and her second career as an author. Learn more at www.patriciagrayhall.com/.
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3:15pm-4:15pm: Workshop: Breaking the Submission Barrier with D Dina Friedman
Offering your work to journals and literary agents can be a scary thing. This confidence-building workshop will cover some strategies for setting reasonable and realistic submission goals and persevering through rejection. We’ll also cover submission strategies that can increase your chances of getting your work out into the universe where it deserves to be seen.
D Dina Friedman, MFA, taught for 20 years at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and has spoken at many writing conferences including the New England Society for Children’s Book Writers, The National Writers’ Union, and the Hudson Children’s Book Festival on topics that included imposter syndrome, improvisation, historical fiction, creating memorable characters, and reflective writing. Before teaching at UMass, she taught writing skills at Mt. Holyoke College. She also facilitated weekly creative writing workshops independently and through Amherst Writers & Artists for many years. Dina is the author of two award-winning YA novels, one chapbook of poetry, and has two books forthcoming. Learn more at: ddinafriedman.com.
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4:15pm-5:00pm: Keynote: Finding Re-vision in the Rubble
Kimberly Garrett Brown, MFA, is Publisher and Executive Editor of Minerva Rising Press, a literary press dedicated to publishing women writers. Her best-selling debut novel, Cora’s Kitchen, won the 2022 Story Circle Network Sarton Women’s Book Award for Historical Fiction and the 2022 Bronze Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for multicultural fiction. Her work has appeared in Black Lives Have Always Mattered: A Collection of Essays, Poems and Personal Narratives, The Feminine Collective, Compass Literary Magazine, Today’s Chicago Woman, Chicago Tribune, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA at Goddard College. She currently lives in Boca Raton, Florida. Learn more at: https://kimberlygarrettbrown.com/
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Registration:
Early Bird (through 9/30): $49
Regular (10/1-10/20): $69
