Registration opens for Squire Summer Writing Workshops, June 13-16

Press release:

For the first time in its history, the North Carolina Writers’ Network is coming to High Country for the 2017 Squire Summer Writing Workshops. This intimate, weekend-long “residency” style immersion happens July 13-16 at Appalachian State University, in Boone.

Registration is capped at forty-two attendees: register now.

The Squire Summer Writing Workshops offer conferencegoers the chance to study elements of one genre with one instructor over the course of the program. Attendees will work on their own manuscripts, as well as those of their peers, while also attending readings, special presentations, and taking advantage of built-in writing time, atop the beauty and majesty of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Joseph Bathanti will lead the tract in poetry, “Writing the Longer Narrative Poem.” Sheryl Monks will lead the fiction course,”How Bad Things Happen to Good Characters: Compression, Tension, and Catharsis in Fiction.” Eric G. Wilson will lead the creative nonfiction workshop, “Creating Presence: Voice in Creative Nonfiction.”

Joseph Bathanti is former Poet Laureate of North Carolina (2012-14) and recipient of the 2016 North Carolina Award for Literature. He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Communion Partners; Anson County; The Feast of All Saints; This Metal, nominated for the National Book Award, and winner of the Oscar Arnold Young Award; Land of Amnesia; Restoring Sacred Art, winner of the 2010 Roanoke Chowan Prize, awarded annually by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for best book of poetry in a given year; Sonnets of the Cross; Concertina, winner of the 2014 Roanoke Chowan Prize; and The 13th Sunday after Pentecost, released by LSU Press in 2016. His novel, East Liberty, won the 2001 Carolina Novel Award. His novel, Coventry, won the 2006 Novello Literary Award. His book of stories, The High Heart, won the 2006 Spokane Prize. They Changed the State: The Legacy of North Carolina’s Visiting Artists, 1971-1995, his book of nonfiction, was published in early 2007. His recent book of personal essays, Half of What I Say Is Meaningless, winner of the Will D. Campbell Award for Creative Nonfiction, is from Mercer University Press. A new novel, The Life of the World to Come, was released from University of South Carolina Press in late 2014. Bathanti is Professor of Creative Writing at Appalachian State University in Boone, and the University’s Watauga Residential College Writer-in-Residence. He served as the 2016 Charles George VA Medical Center Writer-in-Residence in Asheville.

Sheryl Monks is the author of Monsters in Appalachia, published by Vandalia Press, an imprint of West Virginia University Press. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Queens University of Charlotte. Sheryl’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Electric Literature, The Butter, The Greensboro Review, storySouth, Regarding Arts and Letters, Night Train, and other journals, and in the anthologies Surreal South: Ghosts and Monsters and Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Contemporary West Virginia Fiction and Poetry, among others. She works for a peer-reviewed medical journal and edits the online literary magazine Change Seven. Visit her online at www.sherylmonks.com.

Eric G. Wilson is a professor of English at Wake Forest University, an Appalachian State alumnus, and the author of five works of creative nonfiction: Keep It Fake, How to Make a Soul, Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck, The Mercy of Eternity: A Memoir of Depression and Grace, and Against Happiness. His essays have appeared or are appearing in the Portland Review, Hotel Amerika, The Fanzine, Georgia Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, Oxford American, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Our State, and Chronicle of Higher Education. He has also published a volume for Muse Books: The Iowa Series in Creativity and Writing, My Business Is To Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing. His most recent book, a work of fiction called Polaris Ghost, is coming out with Outpost 19 this winter.

The 2017 Squire Summer Writing Workshops are built around the same programming as past Squire Summer Writing Residencies: it’s the same great content, but with a new name.

“We felt that ‘workshop’ was more accurate, because registrants will study classic examples of their chosen genre, and both offer and receive feedback on works-in-progress,” said NCWN Executive Director Ed Southern. “The foundation of the conference, though, is the same: lauded instructors, personalized attention, and a supportive, focused environment in which to strive for excellence in writing.”

Boone, home to Appalachian State University, is the cultural center of North Carolina’s High Country. TripAdvisor named this small town, which is a popular vacation destination, the number-two “Diamond in the Rough,” and National Geographic named it among its “Best Places to Live and Play.” Along with great breweries, restaurants, and local businesses, Boone typically boasts temperatures no warmer than 76 degrees, which will come as quite a relief to many Squire Summer Writing Workshops registrants by mid-July.

Registration for the 2017 Squire Summer Writing Workshops is now open.

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