Wilton Barnhardt: How to punch up humor at NCWN Conference

Rebecca McClanahan

Did I say that the 2015 Hollins writer-in-residence Rebecca McClanahan will  lead a workshop on shaping the raw material of family history into an engaging and artful text?

• That the hilarious Wilton Barnhardt, author of the Charlotte-based novel, "Look Away, Look Away," will talk about ways to punch up the humor in your writing.

• That award-winning Charlotte poet Cedric Tillman will talk about cutting the fat and getting at the marrow of your poetry.

• That the dashing Davidson poet Anthony Abbott will tell you everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask.

• That Chantel Acevedo, editor of Southern Humanities Review, will lead a workshop on the structure of a novel.

• That Queens University writing professor Julie Funderburk will talk about poetry and time -- how it flies, slows, how we remember and forget, how we dread and anticipate.

• That Pulitzer-finalist poet Morri Creech will discuss how meter, rhyme and fixed forms can generate new and exciting poems.

• That the Charlotte-based literary agent Sally McMillan will serve on a panel about agents and editors.

Have I told you lately that there's all this and more?


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

Pre-registration closes Friday, November 14. Register now!

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.