Each spring the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation selects five English speaking writers and five Bulgarian writers to participate in the Sozopol Fiction Seminar, which takes places in the tiny, historic town of Sozopol, Bulgaria, on the Black Sea. Four of the 2010 English speaking fellows–Kelly Luce, Carin Clevidence, Charles Conley, and Paul Vidich–collaborate on a group portrait of their experience at this year’s seminar.
Big thanks to Anne for alerting me to what looks like a great conference in New York on November 12 – 13. The Literary Writers Conference bills itself as: A two-day conference for fiction, poetry, and creative-nonfiction writers learning how to maneuver in the marketplace. Meet writers, editors, agents, publicists and publishers from Publishers Weekly, Oxford University Press, Scribner, Hachette Book Group, Graywolf, the Poetry Society of America, Bloomsbury, Knopf, the Academy of American Poets and more. The lineup of editors, publicists, bookstores and lit mags – not to mention writers – looks stellar. The dozen programs include a Working […]
Sponsored by the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, the Desert Nights, Rising Stars returns March 3-6, 2011. The conference brings writers of all levels together for four days in Tempe to study fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. Participants have the opportunity to hone their craft in the classroom with distinguished writers, sharing dialogue during classes, readings, and other events. Master Classes add five hours of morning instruction, spread over three days, in a group of no more than ten. This allows an experience that is both intimate and affordable. The 2011 conference faculty includes […]
Liam Callanan uncovers the alchemy behind George Garrett’s final story, “Thanksgiving.” With each new twist, Garrett creates the mystery and momentum that spur us on to “read further, hoping to discover the answer,” writes Callanan.
Grub Street is an independent not-for-profit writing center in Boston that runs writing classes as well as an annual literary conference, The Muse and the Marketplace. At the most recent Muse, Chuck Palahniuk was the keynote speaker, and even if you missed the conference, you can watch his speech below. Palahniuk tells the story of a very bad night in Paris on book tour and offers some possible metaphors for writing, as well as advice on eating cheese in France (!): Chuck Palahniuk from Grub Street on Vimeo. You can also listen to last year’s keynote address (in MP3 format) […]
“For those of you who have yet to publish your first book, I can predict with about 96% certainty how it will go: It won’t happen when you want it to, or in the way you expect. Of course it’ll take longer than you want — you know that. It’ll take so long you could grow a tree, learn forestry and paper-making, then print and bind it yourself and carry it by hand to every last remaining independent bookstore in the country. That is, if you don’t succumb first to addiction, poverty, despair, humiliation, or suicide. In short, it will take longer than you think you can stand, and yet, in the end, as you struggle to make your last-chance, oh-my-God-this-is-going-out-in-the-world? revisions, you’ll inevitably feel rushed and wonder where all that time went.”
“When I was asked whether I’d be interested in taking part in a panel on turning the MFA thesis into a first book, I said yes right away, but I wasn’t sure what I could contribute. In fact, I felt like a bit of a fraud because my journey from the thesis to the published book was so long and roundabout. But I’ve convinced myself that this is part of what makes my story worth telling here, because long and roundabout might be just as common as quick and straightforward, and my particular kind of roundabout experience makes me feel emboldened to give certain bits of advice.”
“During my years as a bookseller, I cherished the opportunities to talk with fellow readers who were enthusiastic about books: how we read them, why we read them, where we read them—you name it. And whether mysteries or metaphysics, non-fiction or nature writing, Chaucer or children’s literature, there was a world of writing to discuss, much of which I had never heard of. I loved nothing more than learning and contributing to that community. It is this same sense of community that we try to foster at Fiction Writers Review. One that is made up of tastes and interests as divergent and varied as our contributors. But if there’s one unifying element, I have to say it’s that very same enthusiasm for books. An unabashed, unapologetic, earnest love of ‘shop talk.'”
How do you know when vampire lit has reached critical mass? When it gets an academic conference. Vampire literature is now receiving some scholarly attention with a conference at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK. Despite the smirk factor, the conference—”Open Graves, Open Minds: Vampires and the Undead in Modern Culture”— has some serious intellectual heft: The aim of the conference is to relate the undead in literature, art, and other media to questions concerning gender, technology, consumption, and social change. […] The irony of creatures with no reflection becoming such a pervasive reflection of modern culture pleases in […]
Here’s a sneak peek at a video from FWR’s panel (with Waccamaw, The Emerging Writers Network/The Collagist/Dzanc, and storySouth) on lit sites and online journals. AWPers, join us in the Granite Room (in the Hyatt) today (Saturday, April 10) from noon to 1:15! And stop by our table at the bookfair (N12).
