North Carolina Writers’ Network Fall Conference in Asheville, Nov. 20-22

Registration is now open for the 2015 fall conference held by the North Carolina Writers’ Network. The event takes place at the Doubletree by Hilton Asheville-Biltmore, Friday, Nov. 20 to Sunday, Nov. 22. The conference includes networking opportunities, readings, keynote addresses, lunch and dinner banquets and workshops led by such writers as Lee Smith, Robert Beatty and Megan Shepherd.

Press release from event organizers:

Registration is now open for the North Carolina Writers’ Network 2015 Fall Conference, November 20-22, at the Doubletree by Hilton Asheville-Biltmore. 2015 marks the thirtieth anniversary of NCWN, and the Network will celebrate more than a generation of serving writers at all levels of skill and experience, all weekend long.

Fall Conference attracts hundreds of writers from around the country and provides a weekend full of activities that include lunch and dinner banquets with readings, keynotes, tracks in several genres, open mic sessions, and the opportunity for one-on-one manuscript critiques with agents or editors. Professional writers from North Carolina and beyond comprise the conference faculty.

New York Times bestselling author Lee Smith, author of, most recently, Guests on Earth, will give the Keynote Address. Former NC poet laureate Kathryn Stripling Byer will be the featured guest at Saturday’s luncheon, and later that night the annual banquet—the de facto birthday bash for the Network—will feature musical guests Keith Flynn & the Holy Men.

Tina Barr will lead the Master Class in Poetry, “The Alchemy of Revision.” She has published five volumes of poetry, including her most recent, Kaleidoscope (Iris Press). Her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, the MacDowell Colony, and the Ucross Foundation.

The Master Class in Creative Nonfiction, “Using the Imagination in Memoir,” will be led by Christine Hale. A fellow of MacDowell, Ucross, Hedgebrook, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she teaches in the Antioch University-Los Angeles Low-Residency MFA Program as well as the Great Smokies Writing Program. Her new book, A Piece of Sky, A Grain of Rice: A Memoir in Four Meditations (Apprentice House, 2016), is set in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

Tommy Hays will lead the Master Class in Fiction, “Locating Our Stories.” His first middle grade novel, What I Came to Tell You, was a VOYA Top Shelf Pick for Middle Grade Fiction 2014, a nominee for the 2015-16 North Carolina Young Adult Award, and a Fall 2013 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. He is Executive Director of the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC-Asheville and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at Murray State University.

Additional fiction workshops include “Writing Middle Grade Fiction” from Robert Beatty, whose recent novel, Serafina and the Black Cloak, features Asheville’s Biltmore Estate and was a 2015 Summer Okra Pick. Wayne Caldwell will teach attendees how to craft the perfect first paragraph; Vicki Lane will review “Mystery 101.” Wofford College’s John Lane, author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, will instruct on “Writing Description that Means Something”; Megan Shepherd, whose novel The Madman’s Daughter was optioned for film and won the NC Book Award for Young Adult Literature, will teach “Writing Young Adult Fiction”; and Lee Smith will lead a freewheeling discussion on the hazards and benefits of fiction and creative nonfiction.

Poets will find a broad range of offerings including former UNC-Chapel Hill English Department Chairman Laurence Avery’s “To Rhyme or Not to Rhyme, That is the Question”; “The Art of Editing Poetry” with Keith Flynn; and “Personal Poetry Dives into Archetype,” guided by Katherine Soniat, author of seven poetry collections.

For those writers hoping to stick more to the truth, workshops include “Guiding Others through Places You Love” with travel writer Danny Bernstein; Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Laura Hope-Gill’s “Narrative Medicine: Stories in Clinical Care”; “Memoir Plus: Doing More With Memoir” from Western Carolina University’s Jeremy B. Jones; and Catherine Reid of Warren Wilson College will lead a workshop on balancing craft and content.

Along with classes focusing on craft, the 2015 Fall Conference offers workshops designed to help writers navigate the publishing industry. Amy Cherrix, author liaison for the Southern Independent Booksellers Association, will lead a workshop on helping authors connect with independent bookstores. NCWN’s Communications Director Charles Fiore and Board Member-at-Large Nicki Leone (aka Lady Banks) will co-teach “Web Tools for Writers.” Joy Neaves will guide writers through the submission process, and Heather Newton will discuss legal issues writers commonly encounter in the areas of copyright and defamation.

For full faculty biographies, click here.

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

2015 Fall Conference sponsors include Lenoir-Rhyne University’s MA in Writing Program; Chatham-Lee Counties NCWN regional rep Al Manning; Alice Osborn and Write from the Inside Out; The Thomas Wolfe Memorial State Historic Site; WCQS Western North Carolina Public Radio; Western Carolina University’s MA in Professional Writing Program; and the North Carolina Arts Council.

Registration is now open at www.ncwriters.org.

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.