Wiley Cash keynote speaker at UNC Wilmington's third annual Summer Writers Conference

Registration is now open for the third annual Summer Writers Conference to be held June 26-28, 2015 at the University of North Carolina – Wilmington. There will be workshops in fiction, nonfiction and poetry as well as readings, roundtable discussions and group writing activities. According to novelist Vallie Lynn Watson (A
River So Long), one of the organizers, the conference is intended to give participants a kind of MFA experience in one weekend.

Photo by Tiffany B. Davis

Wiley Cash will be the keynote speaker and leader of the fiction workshop. Cash is the author of This Dark Road to Mercy, a finalist for the 2015 Edgar Award, and A Land More Kind Than Home, both of which were New York Times bestsellers.

Richard Krawiec will direct the nonfiction workshop. Krawiec is the author of the novels Time Sharing and Faith in What? and the short story collection, Fools of God. His poetry collections include Breakdown and She Hands Me the Razor. He is the founder of the Jacar Press in Durham.

The poetry workshop will be led by Emily Louise Smith, director of the UNCW Publishing Laboratory and head of the creative writing department’s literary imprint, Lookout Books. Her poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2010, Columbia Poetry Review, Front Porch, New South, The Journal, Smartish Pace, the Southern Review, and Tar River Poetry, among others.

A roundtable entitled, “Working with an Editor,” will be led by Krawiec and Beth Staples, associate editor of Ecotone, the UNCW lit mag.

Vallie Lynn Watson advises that, if the number of participants exceeds that of previous years, additional instructors/sessions will be scheduled. When registering, participants will indicate in which genre they want to take workshops.


The Tentative Schedule

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• Friday, June 26, includes registration (beginning at noon), welcoming orientation and an opportunity to meet the workshop leaders. There will be a two hour group writing activity followed by dinner and faculty readings.
• On Saturday, June 27, fiction, nonfiction and poetry workshops begin right after breakfast and are two and a half hours long. In the afternoon the roundtable discussion on “How to Work With an Editor” will be followed by participant readings and group writing activities. After dinner, Wiley Cash will present the keynote address and sign books.
• Sunday, June 28 will include fiction, nonfiction and poetry workshops, roundtable discussions and participant readings.

The basic fee for the conference is $320 which includes workshops, roundtables and readings as well as all meals from Friday lunch to Sunday lunch, including the keynote dinner Saturday night, with wine and beer at dinner both evenings. Accommodations are not included but conference organizers will be happy to offer suggestions, Ms. Watson says.

For an additional fee of $75, participants may schedule an optional 25 minute manuscript critique session.

To register, go to uncw.edu/summerwriters or call (910) 962-3195.