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.

 

Creech and Funderburk: Double-header at Queens University on Thursday

Two Queens University creative writing teachers -- Sarah Creech and Julie Funderburk -- will give a free public reading at 8 p.m., on Thursday in Ketner Auditorium on the Queens campus.

Creech is the author of  "Season of the Dragonflies," a rich, sensuous novel about generations of women who have made a fortune extracting the elixir of a magical flower that grows deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The scent has magical powers and imbues the wearer with good fortune. When the plant begins mysteriously to die, it's the younger daughter Lucia -- whose powers have been dormant for 33 years -- who comes into her own and saves the day.

Creech, who grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, lives with her husband, the poet Morrie Creech, and their two children in Charlotte.

Funderburk is the author of a new poetry collection, "Thoughts to Fold into Birds." Her poetry has appeared previously in such literary journals as Ploughshares, Best New Poets and The Cincinnati Review. She's won scholarships to Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers' conferences, and she serves as poetry editor of the online journal storySouth.

A former managing editor of the Greensboro Review, Funderburk was recently named a semi-finalist in the prestigious Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.

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