2014 SPRING CONFERENCE
Sponsored by the Greensboro News & Record
MHRA Building (Corner of Spring Garden and Forest Streets)
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Saturday, April 12, 2014
The North Carolina Writers' Network and the Creative Writing Program at UNC Greensboro bring you a full day of workshops, panels, conversations, and more. This year’s Spring Conference again will be in UNCG’s MHRA Building, on the corner of Spring Garden and Forest Streets, offering classes and panel discussions on the craft and business of writing and publishing.
In addition, the “lunch” part of Lunch with an Author will be provided for those who register, so writers will be able to spend more time talking, and less time waiting in line. Plus, free parking, thanks to the UNCG Creative Writing Program.
Register Online | Download a Registration Form**Pre-Registration is closed. On-site registration available April 12.**
FEES AND LOGISTICS | SCHEDULE-AT-A-GLANCE | FULL CONFERENCE SCHEDULE WITH COURSES | FACULTY BIOGRAPHIES
Fees and Logistics
Register Online | Download a Registration Form **Pre-Registration is closed. On-site registration available April 12.**
Early registration ends Sunday, April 6. Members may register on-site April 12 for $135; non-members may register on-site for $165 |
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Early registration:
Lunch with an Author:
IMPORTANT: Spring Conference attendees MUST register for Lunch with an Author prior to the conference. Lunch with an Author registration will NOT be available on-site. |
On-site registration as a walk-in:
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You can join the Network when you register, and pay the member rates plus the appropriate member dues:
$75 standard 1-year membership
$55 senior (65+), student, disabled membership
$130 2-year membership
$130 household 1-year membership
Scholarships
If you would like to apply for a scholarship, please send a C.V. and a letter of interest to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Cancellations
Cancellations must be made in writing and arrive at the Network office (via USPS or e-mail) by 4:00 pm, Monday, April 7, for you to receive a refund, less 25 percent. Send request to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. No refunds for cancellations received after April 7 or for no-shows.
Venue and Parking
The 2014 Spring Conference will be held in the Moore Humanities & Research Administration (MHRA) Building on the UNCG campus, 1111 Spring Garden Street, Greensboro, NC, 27403. The MHRA Building is located at the corner of Spring Garden and Forest Streets.
Free parking will be available for Spring Conference registrants in the Oakland Avenue Parking Deck, across Forest Street from the MHRA Building (behind Yum Yum Better Ice Cream and Old Town Draught House).
A map of the UNCG campus is available here.
Nearby Hotels
The Greensboro Marriott Downtown (www.marriott.com/gsodt) offers favorable rates to those attending events at UNC Greensboro.
Other accommodations can be found through the university's list, http://admissions.uncg.edu/visit-lodging.php, or the Greensboro Convention & Visitors Bureau, http://www.visitgreensboronc.com.
For Writers with Special Needs
The North Carolina Writers' Network strives to make our programs and services accessible to all writers, including those with special needs. If you require conference materials either in large print or in Braille, or if you require a sign-language interpreter, please register for the conference and submit your request to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. no later than Monday, March 31. If you require any other special assistance, please let us know as soon as possible at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We will do our best to accommodate all reasonable requests.
Schedule-at-a-Glance
Register Online | Download a Registration Form**Pre-Registration is closed. On-site registration available April 12.**
Saturday, April 12 | |
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8:00-9:00am | Registration |
8:30 am - 5:00 pm | Exhibit Tables and Book Sales Open |
9:00-10:30 am |
Workshop Session I:
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11:00 am - 12:00 pm | Faculty Readings |
12:00-1:00pm | Lunch with an Author (or lunch on your own) |
1:00-2:00 pm | Open Mic Readings - Sign up at registration table |
2:00-3:30 pm |
Workshop Session II
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4:00-5:00pm |
OR Special Session II: One City, One Prompt with Jacinta V. White |
Full Conference Schedule with Course Descriptions
Register Online | Download a Registration Form**Pre-Registration is closed. On-site registration available April 12.**
8:00–9:00 am Registration
8:30 am – 5:00 pm Exhibits & Book Sales Open
9:00–10:30 am Workshop Session I
The Warp and Weave of Fiction, Part I (Two-Part Fiction) with Nancy Peacock **Closed**
Writing good fiction is not the same as laying a brick wall: first the characterization brick, then the setting brick, then the action brick. Instead, all the elements (character, plot, setting, action, structure, description, emotion, and more) must work together to form the tapestry of storytelling. In this class we will examine successful storytelling through reading and commenting on students' work and the work of published writers, as well as through class exercises.
The Kindest Cut: Writing Energetic Nonfiction, Part I (Two-Part Nonfiction) with Jonathan Farmer **Closed**
When we’re working from reality, the need to say what happened puts a lot of pressure on our style. In this workshop, we’ll experiment with cutting a surprising number of words from our own and each other’s writing in order to uncover some of the possibilities we’ve already woven into our prose. We’ll also look at examples of efficient nonfiction writing for models of the ways we can answer the pressure to say everything with language that carries the weight and vitality of our reckoning. All participants should bring at least five copies of a double-spaced excerpt from a nonfiction project—ideally one that you’re currently working on—that’s between 500 and 750 words long. (It’s fine if it cuts off suddenly.)
Anchoring the Emotion (Poetry) with Mark Smith-Soto
T. S. Eliot taught that emotion in poetry must find expression in an “objective correlative”—a sensory experience that will evoke the desired feeling in the reader rather than simply describe it. Naming or describing an emotion, and making others experience it as we feel it, are totally different things, and a failure to understand that difference can undermine a poem’s effectiveness. In this workshop, we will work on techniques useful in “anchoring” an abstract notion to the heart of a poem so as to make it shareable with others.
Thieves & Liars: How We Build the World (Fiction) Drew Perry
This workshop will address something critical to the crafting of stories and novels: When and how to steal from the world around us (hint: early and often), and when to make things up (another hint: when the story demands it). We'll talk about how things like landscape, humor, oddity and stray detail are often the most important ways of entering into a piece of work—and keeping it alive in draft after draft after draft. Another way of thinking about this: We'll talk about how to use your own strange obsessions most productively in your own writing. So you really love, say, tractors. Or tigers. And they keep appearing on the page. We'll find ways to make that feel less weird, and more like you're working.
Writing from Experience with Steve Mitchell and Carol Roan
Writing is more than something that happens in our heads. Every element of our selves has a voice we might use. How do we engage this wealth of experience in our writing? This workshop will use short exercises and prompts to open up the question.
Market Your Book—With Imagination with Carrie Knowles and Peggy Payne
You can improve your book’s sales, using the very ability that started you writing in the first place: imagination, the ability to see possibilities. Whether you start the process before you have a publication date or when the day is looming, you can help to kick off and maintain your book’s sales. You can even give a long-published book new life. Carrie Knowles and Peggy Payne, creators of their own three-state Crazy Ladies Book Tour and authors of a total of nine books, will show you how. Both are novelists, nonfiction authors, and have worked in advertising and marketing. They will suggest tactics and strategies for books and book ideas that workshop participants bring in.
So You Want to Write a Children's Book with Kelly Starling Lyons
Have you always wanted to write a children's book? Start the journey with children's book author Kelly Starling Lyons in a workshop designed to introduce you to the field. You'll get a basic understanding of children's book genres, mine your life for story ideas and receive tips to help you on your way.
11:00 am – 12:00 pm Faculty Readings
12:00–1:00 pm Lunch
Lunch with an Author (or lunch on your own). Sign up to have lunch with a small group of fellow registrants and one of our conference instructors. This is a great opportunity to talk shop with an experienced writer in a relaxed, informal setting.
Pre-registration is required to participate in Lunch with an Author; you will not be able to sign up on-site.
1:00–2:00 pm Open Mic Readings
Sign up at the conference registration table if you would like to share your work. Only twenty-four reading slots, of five minutes each, will be available, first-come, first-served.
2:00–3:30 pm Workshop Session II
The Warp and Weave of Fiction, Part II (Two-Part Fiction) with Nancy Peacock**Closed**
See description above.
The Kindest Cut: Writing Energetic Nonfiction, Part II (Two-Part Creative Nonfiction) with Jonathan Farmer
See description above.
Infinite Particulars and the Worlds They Make: Choosing Detail in Poetry with John Thomas York
Ever had trouble generating detail, choosing detail (or letting the images choose you), or deciding when it's time to do some serious de-cluttering? Come join a craft talk, discussing strategies (some like cockleburs, some like fairy dust) offered by the leader after his long walks in literary fields. Bring a poem to share.
The Beating, Breaking Hearts of Fictional Characters with Kim Church
The heart of fiction is character; but what is the heart of a fictional character? How is it revealed to the writer, and how does the writer express it? This workshop, for fiction writers at all levels, will focus on how to create characters that are unique, lively, and memorable—characters we might like to spend time with after the workshop is over. To prepare for this session, please think of a memorable event from your own life—something that touched or scared or excited or confused or changed or defined you in some small way. Something you don’t mind sharing with others, a moment you’d like to put in a time capsule. Don’t write about it beforehand; just come with an idea. And paper and pen.
Panel Discussion: Writing About War with Robin Greene, Sharon Raynor, and Paul Stroebel
From Homer to Hemingway, writers have grappled with the causes, effects, and costs of war more than any other subject (except, perhaps, for love). As writers living in a time and place at war, how do we write responsibly and honestly about our—and others'—experience of it, whether from the front lines or the home front? This panel will examine this question, and others that writers face when they try to put war into words.
How to Make an Elevator Pitch with Linda Rohrbough
It’s a completely different set of skills to effectively talk about a book, than to write one. And it doesn’t take long for writers to figure out they need to be able to talk about their book to people they don’t know in a succinct and compelling way. First, it’s to editors and agents, but after publication it’s to book store managers, reader groups, and even the media. “How to Make an Elevator Speech” provides all the tools, including a simple three-step plug and play formula for pitching any book, along with the encouragement and fear-management techniques authors need to develop this all-important skill. Packed with examples, this interactive workshop gives writers everything they need to implement the important career-long skill of pitching their books.
4:00–5:00 pm Special Session I: Speed Pitch! with Robin Miura, Carin Siegfried, Betsy Thorpe, and Kevin Watson**Closed**
You have a book proposal, the attention of an editor, and one minute to convince that editor that your manuscript is worth publishing. Can you fill that minute with the best pitch possible?
Speed Pitch is free with your conference registration, but you must sign up in advance to take part, and space is limited. Each conference registrant who signs up for Speed Pitch will get to sit down with each of the four book pros taking part, but none will have more than the allotted time with any of them. Those who register for Speed Pitch are encouraged to also sign up for Linda Rohrbough’s “How to Make an Elevator Pitch” workshop during Workshop Session II.
Speed Pitch probably won’t lead you directly to a publishing deal—but it may lead you there indirectly, thanks to a practiced pitch, a refined proposal, and maybe even a better manuscript.
4:00–5:00 pm Special Session II: One City, One Prompt with Jacinta V. White
Imagine an entire city writing together about a common theme. One City, One Prompt (OCOP) is a series of writing and community-building events held across the globe—one city at a time—for people to gather to write, tell stories, perform or discuss a common theme. In this session, Greensboro poet and facilitator Jacinta V. White will provide an overview of One City, One Prompt, and begin an opening dialogue on this year's theme, “Begin Again.” Jacinta will then give you the prompt, and let you write.
The session will close with sharing of and reflections on the work the prompt produced, as well as some brief information for those who might want to bring One City, One Prompt to their own towns.
Bring something to write with, and an open, agile mind.
Faculty Biographies
Register Online | Download a Registration Form**Pre-Registration is closed. On-site registration available April 12.**
Spring Conference Faculty |
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The 2014 Spring Conference is made possible with support from the Creative Writing Department at UNC-Greensboro, the Greensboro News & Record, the North Carolina Arts Council, and Self Employment in the Arts (SEA).