Inaugural Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference Announced

Shay Youngblood to be Keynote Speaker

The Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference Steering Committee, in conjunction with the Muscogee County Friends of Libraries announces the inaugural Chattahoochee Valley Writers’ Conference that will be held Saturday, September 29, 2007, at the Columbus Public Library, 3000 Macon Road, Columbus, Georgia. Following Shay Youngblood’s keynote presentation, one dozen workshops will be presented by nationally-recognized authorities including the Poets Laureate of Alabama and Tennessee, Sue Brannon Walker & Maggi Vaughn. The registration fee for the conference, which includes lunch, is $45.

Prior to the conference, at 7 pm Thursday evening, September 27, the Georgia Poetry Society will sponsor a free public poetry reading by the two Poets Laureate in the library auditorium.

The opening plenary session will cover the accomplishments of Honorary Chairman F. Clason Kyle and Chattahoochee Valley Authors Nunnally Johnson and Carson McCullers will be recognized prior to Ms. Youngblood’s keynote address “You Got to Move Your Feet When You Pray.” Workshops following the plenary session will include:

Ø Sue Brannan Walker, Poet Laureate of Alabama: “Lives Like Lines or Life Lines of the Serial Killer Poem (not Poetry) (Writing the Poem to die for)”;

Ø Michael Bishop: “Interstitial Dreams: Fantasy, Magic, Realism, Science Fiction and Other Fruitfully Mutating Categories”;

Ø Peter Bowerman: “The Well-Fed Self-Publisher: How to Turn One Book into a Full-Time Living”; and,

Ø Dusty Nix and Allison Kennedy: “Writing for the Newspaper”.

Ø Maggi Vaughn, Poet Laureate of Tennessee: “Image, Image, Image: What I Learned from Country Music That Made Me a Peoples’ Poet”;

Ø Niles Reddick: “Creative Nonfiction: Wrestling with an Oxymoron”;

Ø Brian Jay Corrigan: “Crafting Character Through Dialog and Description”;

Ø Neil Wilkinson: “Copyrights, Licensing, & Other Intellectual Property Issues With Which Writers Must Wrestle.”

Ø Esther Luttrell: “Screenwriting – Selling Scripts to Today’s Hollywood”;

Ø Michael Smith: “Short Stories for the Age of Electronic Entertainment”;

Ø Patricia Sprinkle: “ The Town That Isn't There: Creating Believable Protagonists and Settings Good for Story After Story”; and,

Ø David Muschell: “No Compromise: Heightening Conflict in Your Writing”.

For additional information, or to register, please contact John Frandsen, CVWC Coordinator at 334-821-2036 (or email chattwriter@charter.net) or Linda Ames at 706-323-4014 or visit http://www.chattwriters.org. (Note: email is singular; website is plural.)