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ONEONTA, NY—Characters don't just happen to live inside the worlds we create for them, they inhabit their worlds as living, breathing beings. They are products of their environments, interacting with, influencing, and being influenced by their habitats.
That's why setting is so important. More than merely a two-dimensional backdrop, the setting can reflect, oppose, and shift the interior worlds of our characters.
On Tuesday, February 11, at 7:00 pm, novelist George Hovis will lead the online class "Vivid Landscapes, Unpredictable Characters, Unforgettable Stories" (Fiction).
Registration is now closed.
This course is capped at forty (40) registrants, first-come, first-served. There is a $45 fee to register.
Dive into a discussion of strategies for finding the exotic, the surreal, and the sublime available in everyday landscapes. During this session, we’ll explore how setting gives birth to original characters and plots—and how, in turn, the choices of characters define a place.
After examining the function of setting in the work of masters such as Zora Neale Hurston, Mark Twain, and Lee Smith, we’ll map the settings of our own fictional worlds in order to discover the surprises lurking therein.
Moving beyond mere description, we will see how both the actions and interior life of characters are driven by the places they inhabit.
George Hovis' debut novel, The Skin Artist (SFK, 2019), explores the gothic urban South, a world of tattoo magic and failed upward mobility. His stories and essays have appeared widely in such journals as The Carolina Quarterly, The Fourth River, Mississippi Quarterly, New Madrid, Southern Cultures, The Southern Literary Journal, and North Carolina Literary Review. A Pushcart Prize nominee and a former president of the Thomas Wolfe Society, he earned a Ph.D from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. He is a professor of English at SUNY Oneonta and a recipient of the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
"Vivid Landscapes, Unpredictable Characters, Unforgettable Stories" (Fiction) is the North Carolina Writers' Network's fourth offering in their 2019-2020 series of online classes.
"This program is a great way for writers from all over North Carolina to connect without having the hassle of driving somewhere and finding parking," said NCWN communications director Charles Fiore. "Online classes offer top-shelf instruction for a fraction of the cost, and the software itself is very intuitive and easy to use."
The online class "Vivid Landscapes, Unpredictable Characters, Unforgettable Stories" (Fiction) is available to anyone with an internet connection, or who even owns just a telephone. Instructions for accessing the online class on Tuesday, February 11, will be sent to registrants no less than twenty-four hours prior to the start of class. The class will be archived and made available to registrants for repeated viewings.
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.
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CARRBORO—Poets must continually hold tangible language in one hand and the more abstract, artistic intent of their work in the other. It's no small feat. The most effective poems balance these two polar opposites; it's often through the tangible that the abstract moves us.
If you've ever struggled to turn your artistic intent into a flesh-and-blood poem, the next online class in the North Carolina Writers' Network online series is for you.
On Tuesday, January 14, 2020, at 7:00 pm, poet and educator Gideon Young will lead the online class "Balancing the Concrete and Conceptual" (Poetry).
Registration is closed.
This course is capped at forty (40) registrants, first-come, first-served. There is a $45 fee to register.
In this workshop, we’ll study the poetry of Sandra Lim, Jake Skeets, Gwendolyn Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, Richard Wright, and Crystal Simone Smith, examining aspects of the real and ethereal, matter and imagination, the world and the mind. We’ll write poems, engage in dynamic and positive discussion and critique, and have fun!
Gideon Young is a member of the Carolina African American Writers’ Collective and the Carrboro Poets Council. His poetry has appeared/is forthcoming in Backbone Press, Haibun Today, Modern Haiku, Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, Sons & Daughters Literary Journal, and The Elizabeth Keckley Reader: A Determined Life, Vol. II. Gideon is a co-author of One Window’s Light: A Collection of Haiku, edited by Lenard D Moore and published by Unicorn Press in2017, winner of the Haiku Society of America Merit Award for Best Anthology. Gideon is a Teaching Fellow for A+ Schools of North Carolina, a K-12 Literacy Specialist, and stay-at-home dad.
"Balancing the Concrete and Conceptual" (Poetry) is the North Carolina Writers' Network's third offering in their 2019-2020 series of online classes.
"This program is a great way for writers from all over North Carolina to connect without having the hassle of driving somewhere and finding parking," said NCWN communications director Charles Fiore. "Online classes offer top-shelf instruction for a fraction of the cost, and the software itself is very intuitive and easy to use."
The online class "Balancing the Concrete and Conceptual" (Poetry) is available to anyone with an internet connection, or who even owns just a telephone. Instructions for accessing the online class on Tuesday, January 14, 2020, will be sent to registrants no less than twenty-four hours prior to the start of class. The class will be archived and made available to registrants for repeated viewings.
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.
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ASHEVILLE--If you've always dreamed of having a bestselling author and inductee of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame read your work, now's your chance.
Randall Kenan will serve as final judge of The Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize. This competition awards $1,000 and possible publication in The Thomas Wolfe Review to a piece of fiction under 3,000 words.
Submit here.
Sponsored by NCWN and administered by the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, The Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize is open to any writer regardless of geographical location or prior publication.
The deadline is January 30, 2020.
Randall Kenan is the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits; two works of nonfiction, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century and The Fire This Time; and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead. He edited and wrote the introduction for The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin. Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Mrs. Giles Whiting Award, the North Carolina Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize. Kenan is a 2018 inductee into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. He is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize honors beloved North Carolina writer and Asheville native Thomas Wolfe. He was the author of Look Homeward, Angel, considered one of the great coming-of-age novels. His novels and collected short stories go beyond autobiography, trying to, in William Faulkner’s words, “put all the experience of the human heart on the head of a pin.” His intense poetic language and thoughtfully developed symbology, combined with his uncanny ability to enter the minds of his other characters and give them powerful voices, elevate the books from memoir to undeniable literary art.
He was inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame with the inaugural class of in 1996.
The full competition guidelines for the 2019 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize are listed below and can be found at www.ncwriters.org.
Postmark deadline: January 30 (annual)
Submissions accepted: December 1 – January 30
The Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize honors internationally celebrated North Carolina novelist Thomas Wolfe. The prize is administered by the Great Smokies Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The winner receives $1,000 and possible publication in The Thomas Wolfe Review.
Eligibility and Guidelines
- The competition is open to all writers regardless of geographical location or prior publication.
- Submit two copies (if submitting by mail) of an unpublished fiction manuscript - short story or self-contained novel excerpt - not to exceed 3,000 words, double-spaced, single-sided pages (1" margins, 12-pt. Times New Roman font).
- Author's name should not appear on manuscripts. Instead, include a separate cover sheet with name, address, phone number, e-mail address, word count, and manuscript title. (If submitting online, do not include a cover sheet with your document; Submittable will collect and record your name and contact information.)
- An entry fee must accompany the manuscript: $15 for NCWN members, $25 for nonmembers.
- The entry fee is per submission. You may submit multiple entries.
- You may pay the member entry fee if you join the NCWN with your submission. Checks should be made payable to the North Carolina Writers’ Network.
- Entries will not be returned.
- The winner is announced each April.
- Simultaneous submissions ok, but please notify us immediately if your work is accepted elsewhere.
- To submit online, go to https://ncwriters.submittable.com/submit. Submittable will collect your entry fee via credit card ($15 NCWN members / $25 non-members). (If submitting online, do not include a cover sheet with your document; Submittable will collect and record your name and contact information.)
- To submit by regular mail:
Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize
Great Smokies Writing Program
UNC Asheville
1 University Heights - CPO 1915
Asheville, NC 28804
Questions? Please contact Tommy Hays at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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, visit www.ncwriters.org.