Allan Gurganus to give keynote address at NC Writers' conference

I've been driving around town these golden October days listening to the audio recording of Ann Patchett's delightful collection of essays, "This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage," just out in paperback.

In the first chapter, "The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir about Writing and Life," she talks about switching from poetry writing to fiction writing as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College. Her first fiction writing teacher was none other than North Carolina's own Allan Gurganus. Here's what she says:

Most of what I know about writing I learned from Allan, and it is a testament to my great good luck (heart-stopping, in retrospect, such dumb luck)that it was his classroom I turned up in when I first started to write stories. Bad habits are easy to acquire and excruciating to break. I came to him a blank slate, drained of all confidence I had brought with me to that first poetry class. I knew I still wanted to be a writer, but now I wasn't sure what that even meant. I needed someone to tell me how to go forward. The course that Allan set me on was one that has guided my life ever since. It was the course of hard work. But he also managed, and may God bless him forever for this, to make the work appear to be a thing of beauty.

Believe it or not, that very same Allan Gurganus, who wrote the classic, "The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All," will be giving the keynote address when the North Carolina Writers Network Fall Conference convenes at the Charlotte Sheraton Nov. 21-23. You can register for the conference here: Pre-registration for NCWN’s 2014 Fall Conference closes Friday, November 14. Register now!

The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.

Registration now open for NC Writers' Network Conference in Charlotte

Let's say you're a closet writer. Or maybe a drawer writer. Someone who's been struggling with a novel or  a short story or a group of poems all alone and then stashing them away.

What are you hoping for? That these works will self-polish? That an agent will come knocking, asking if you happen to have something publishable?

Give it up. That's not how it happens.

How it happens is when writers, however timidly, however afraid, come out of the dark and allow other, more experienced writers to offer a guiding hand.

Next month, in Charlotte, you'll have that chance.

The North Carolina Writers' Network 2014 Fall Conference, Nov. 21-23, will convene at the Sheraton Charlotte Hotel.Registration is now open.

 

The Fall Conference attracts hundreds of writers from around the country and provides a weekend full of activities, including workshop tracks in several genres and the opportunity for one-on-one manuscript critiques with editors or agents. Conference faculty include professional writers from North Carolina and beyond.

Allan Gurganus, author of the New York Times bestselling "Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All," and, most recently, "Local Souls," will give the keynote address. Born in Rocky Mount, Gurganus is a Guggenheim Fellow, a PEN-Faulkner finalist, and the recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
 

Morri Creech will lead the Master Class in Poetry. His third collection of poems, "The Sleep of Reason," is a 2014 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in Poetry. He is the Writer-in-Residence at Queens University of Charlotte, where he teaches courses in both the undergraduate creative writing program and in the low residency MFA program.

Aaron Gwyn will lead the Master Class in Fiction. Gwyn, an associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, is the author of a story collection and two novels, including most recently "Wynne’s War."

Joseph Bathanti, North Carolina’s seventh Poet Laureate, will read during the luncheon on Saturday. He fronts a stellar lineup of faculty poets including Julie Funderburk, Cedric Tillman, and Alan Michael Parker whose poetry collection, "Long Division," won the 2012 NC Book Award.
  

As always, the Manuscript Mart, Marketing Mart, and Critique Service are available to those who pre-register. And the Network will again offer the Mary Belle Campbell Scholarship, which sends two poets who teach full-time to the Fall Conference.

Pre-registration for NCWN’s 2014 Fall Conference closes Friday, November 14. Register now!

The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.

Christmas stories from N.C. writers

New stories from seven of North Carolina's best fiction writers star in Our State magazine's December issue.

This is the first time Our State, the magazine of N.C. culture, food and travel, has produced a Christmas fiction issue. And it's an all-star author lineup -- Allan Gurganus, Jill McCorkle, Clyde Edgerton, Margaret Maron, Ron Rash, Elizabeth Spencer and Daniel Wallace.

If you've read these authors, you'll notice some familiar settings. Edgerton's story takes place in fictional Listre, North Carolina. In Rash's piece, a veterinarian heads out under a starry night sky in Madison County to attend to "a calf that ain't of a mind to get born."

McCorkle's story, "Holiday," unfolds at Pine Haven Estates, a retirement village and assisted living in the fictional N.C. town of Fulton. It's adapted from her forthcoming novel, "Life After Life," out in March.

Want to read more from these authors? Check out Our State's handy reading list.