McCrumb To Keynote 2009 North Carolina Writers’ Network Spring Conference
Greensboro, NC – New York Times bestselling author Sharyn McCrumb will
discuss “Keepers of the Legends: Writing about North Carolina” at the
2009 North Carolina Writers’ Network Spring Conference, which takes
place Saturday, April 25, from 8 A.M. until 6 P.M. in the Elliott
University Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
The annual event draws more than 100 writers for intensive workshops
in fiction, creative nonfiction, playwriting, poetry and publishing,
led by distinguished writing faculty from across the nation. This
year’s conference will also feature a Publishing Panel with book and
journal editors, a Faculty Reading, an Open Mike Reading for
conference attendees, and “Lunch with an Author,” in which attendees
share lunch and personal conversation with one of the authors on the
faculty.
McCrumb is an award-winning Southern writer, best known for her
Appalachian “Ballad” novels, set in the North Carolina/Tennessee
mountains, including the New York Times Best Sellers She Walks These
Hills and The Rosewood Casket. Her novels have won the Wilma Dykeman
Award for Literature, the AWA Book of the Year Award, and the AWA Best
Appalachian Novel. A North Carolina native and a graduate of
UNC-Chapel Hill, McCrumb has been named a “Virginia Woman of History”
for literary achievement and has won the AWA Outstanding Contribution
to Appalachian Literature Award. A film of her novel The Rosewood
Casket is currently in production.
Conference participants may select from a variety of half- and
full-day workshops, including “Nowhere to Hide,” a creative nonfiction
workshop with Sir Walter Raleigh Award-winning writer Lee Zacharias;
“Local Atmospheres,” a poetry workshop with renowned poet David
Roderick; “Writing Life Stories” with author Marianne Gingher, the
former director of the Creative Writing Program at UNC-Chapel Hill;
and “Playwriting Improv” with playwright Alan Cook.
Other instructors include Quinn Dalton, Jack Riggs, and Valerie Nieman
on fiction; Carolyn Beard Whitlow on poetry; Carol Roan on reading and
speaking for an audience; and NCWN executive director Ed Southern on
nonfiction.
Registration for the conference—made possible with support from the
Center for Creative Writing in the Arts, UNC-Greensboro, and the North
Carolina Arts Council—is $99 for Network members, $150 for
non-members.
To register, visit www.ncwriters.org, or call (919) 251-9140 for more
information.
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About the North Carolina Writers’ Network
Founded in 1985, the nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the
largest statewide literary arts organization in the country. The
mission of the North Carolina Writers’ Network is to connect, promote,
and lead emerging writers and established writers through workshops,
conferences, and other programs and services. The Network builds
audiences for literature, advocates for the literary arts and for
literacy, and provides information and support services for writers of
all kinds and at all levels.