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.

Queens Instructor Cathy Smith Bowers Wins Award for Poetry Collection

Cathy Smith Bowers

"The Collected Poems of Cathy Smith Bowers" (Press 53) has been named the SIBA winner in poetry for 2014. Selected by a jury of Southern independent booksellers, the award is presented each year to the best book in its category.

Bowers, a native of Lancaster, S.C., and a former N.C. poet laureate, lives in Tryon.
Fred Chappell of Greensboro, another former N.C. poet laureate, says of Bowers's poems:  "Hardship, cruelty, heartbreak, bleak sorrow -- these sad themes are plentiful in the pages of Cathy Smith Bowers. But in its smoldering heart, her poetry holds, like the pinata in 'The Party,' 'a sweet, dark center.' "

Bowers is an instructor in Queens University's low-residency MFA program. She is at work on a novel.

Others winners are Sarah Dessen of Chapel Hill in the young adult category for "The Moon and More" (Viking). Self-described as an "author, mother, worrier," Dessen is the author of ten young adult novels, among them the bestselling "What Happened to Goodbye."

In the novel category, the winner is "Whistling Past the Graveyard" (Simon & Schuster), by Susan Crandall of Indiana. A coming-of-age novel, set in Mississippi in the early 1960s, "Whistling" is Crandall's ninth novel.

John Currence's "Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey: Recipes from my Three Favorite Food Groups and Then Some" (Andrews McMeel) is the winner in the cooking category. Currence owns City Grocery Restaurant Group in Oxford, Miss., and the new book is also up for a James Beard Award.

In non-fiction, the winner is "Five Days At Memorial: Life and Death in Storm-Ravaged Hospital" (Crown) by Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter Sheri Fink. Fink is a physician who reconstructs the five days after Hurricane Katrina struck, when the floodwaters rose, the power failed and the heat climbed.

"The Girl from Felony Bay" (Walden Pond Books) by J.E. Thompson of Charleston, is the children's book winner. Thompson grew up reading the Hardy Boys books and worked for 25 years as an investment banker before turning to writing. (He says his daughter is his best critic.) "The Girl" is a fast-paced mystery for middle-schoolers, set on the coast of South Carolina.