How do editors diagnose what isn’t working in a manuscript, and how can you get out of your own brain and do the same for your work? And then, how can you implement those discoveries in the most efficient and practical ways possible? In this virtual talk, editor and writer Cheryl Klein will offer 17 proven techniques for going deep into your draft, getting a fresh look at it, and completing a great revision.

Cheryl Klein is the editorial director at Lee & Low Books, the nation's largest publisher devoted to books by and about underrepresented people. She is also the author of two adult books about writing -- most recently The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults -- and four picture books, most recently Hamsters Make Terrible Roommates, illustrated by Abhi Alwar. You can find her on the web at cherylklein.com and @chavelaque.

NOTE: This virtual event will NOT be recorded for later viewing.

In his piece, “Some Extensions on the Sovereignty of Science,” poet Alberto Rios writes, “When something explodes, / Turn exactly opposite from it and see what there is to see.” As lyric essayists, how might we, too, “turn away from the explosion” in order to more fully focus on the associative subject matter lurking in the “opposite” direction?  By “turning away” from the subject matter with which we most urgently want to engage, are we able to capture our subject’s emotive power even more poignantly?  Join Matthew Gavin Frank for a conversation on the power of association as an entry point into the lyric essay.

Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of the nonfiction books, The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour Through America’s Food, Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer, Pot Farm, and Barolo; the poetry books, The Morrow Plots, Warranty in Zulu, and Sagittarius Agitprop, and 2 chapbooks.  Preparing the Ghost was a New York Times Editors' Choice, an NPR Notable Book, and a New Yorker Book to Watch Out For.  The Mad Feast was selected as a Staff Pick by The Paris Review, a Best Book of 2015 by Ploughshares, The Millions, and Paste Magazine, longlisted for the Art of Eating Prize, and featured in The Wall Street Journal, Saveur, and Entertainment Weekly.

His latest nonfiction book, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers (about, among other things, the ways in which carrier pigeons are used by diamond smuggling rings) came out February 2021 from W.W. Norton: Liveright.  His work appears widely in journals and magazines, including The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Guernica, The New Republic, Iowa Review, Salon, Conjunctions, The Believer, The Normal School, The Best Travel Writing anthologies, The Best Food Writing anthologies, The Poetry Foundation, and as Notable selections in The Best American Essays anthologies. After spending 17 years in the restaurant industry, he’s now a professor of creative writing in the M.F.A. Program at Northern Michigan University, where he is also the Nonfiction/Hybrids Editor of the literary magazine, Passages North.

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the Eau Claire Community Foundation’s John and Betsy Kell Family Fund!

We need a new language for these times. Poets and poems are central to the global movement towards peace and justice. We will examine poems that resist and renew, that give us hope and joy. We will explore various poets from all over the globe. Madison Poet Laureate Angie Trudell Vasquez will share her work and poetic influences including Carolyn Forché, Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz, Eduardo Galeano, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, Arthur Sze, among others, and the craft techniques they employed in their work. We will write our own poems of witness and share.

Angie Trudell Vasquez is a Mexican-American writer and holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Finishing Line Press published her third collection of poetry, In Light, Always Light, in 2019, and recently accepted her fourth collection, My People Redux, for publication. Her poems have appeared in the Yellow Medicine Review, The Slow Down, the Raven Chronicles, The Rumpus, on the Poetry Foundation’s website, and elsewhere. She is the current poet laureate of Madison, Wisconsin and the first Latina to hold the position. She recently co-edited a poetry anthology entitled, Through This Door – Wisconsin in Poems, with current Wisconsin Poet Laureate, Margaret Rozga, and released it through her small press, Art Night Books, in November 2020. With poet Millissa Kingbird, she co-edited the Spring 2019 issue of the journal the Yellow Medicine Review. angietrudellvasquez.com

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the Eau Claire Community Foundation’s John and Betsy Kell Family Fund!
Photo credit: Nicole Taylor

Rudyard Kipling said, “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” Therein lies the power of historical fiction. Whether you’re writing a detailed account of the Battle of the Bulge or blending history and magic in a fanciful retelling seventeenth-century Salem, there are common elements that make stories from the past resonate with modern readers. Join me for a discussion of these key elements as well as common pitfalls that plague historical fiction authors. We’ll consider the responsibility an author has to the historical record and to the reader. We’ll also explore research techniques and ways to blend historical details into your writing. Finally, we’ll end with an exercise to help you more fully recreate the past on the page and craft a story that’s truly unforgettable.

Amanda Skenandore is the author of two historical novels, The Undertaker’s Assistant and Between Earth & Sky, winner of the 2019 American Library Association’s Reading List Award for Best Historical Fiction. Her third novel The Second Life of Mirielle West comes out in August, 2021. An avid reader, tea-drinker, and wanderlust, Amanda lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband and their pet turtle Lenore.

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the Eau Claire Community Foundation’s John and Betsy Kell Family Fund!

Questions lie at the heart of every story. Yes, “What will happen next?” and “How will this turn out?” are forefront, but what other kinds of questions do you pose to the reader? What questions do you ask yourself as you write? Perhaps more importantly, what are the questions that set you, the writer, on this path—the path of this story and the path of writing in general? How can these questions enlighten your reader—and you? As Eugene Ionesco suggested, “It is not the answer that enlightens but the question.”
In this session we’ll ask a lot of questions! We’ll take a look at the questions we raise in our stories, the questions we ask ourselves as we write, and the questions that keep us writing. Maybe we’ll even find a few answers! And we’ll take a look at a handful of first pages (maybe yours?) to see what readers wonder about as they begin the story, and what bigger questions may lurk ahead

Margi Preus is a New York Times bestselling author of the Newbery Honor Book, Heart of a Samurai and other notable novels and picture books for young readers. New in 2020 are Village of Scoundrels, The Littlest Voyageur, and The Silver Box, part of the Enchantment Lake mystery series.
Her books have won multiple awards, been honored as ALA/ALSC Notables, selected as an NPR Backseat Book Club pick, chosen for community reads, and translated into many languages. When not writing, Margi enjoys traveling, speaking, and visiting schools all over the world.

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the Eau Claire Community Foundation’s John and Betsy Kell Family Fund!

I taught writing in colleges and universities for over 40 years, and during that time I developed a sense of the lessons, theories, strategies, and prompts that were more likely to be helpful and useful to writers than others. I’ll try to condense those years of teaching into a 40 minute presentation that will focus on narrative modes, conflict in story and how it corresponds to story structure, and the storytelling devices that do a particularly effective job of engaging readers. I’ll also suggest some exercises that might lead to the creation of full-length fictions or that might be incorporated into longer narratives.

Larry Watson is the author of the novels THE LIVES OF EDIE PRITCHARD, AS GOOD AS GONE, LET HIM GO, MONTANA 1948, AMERICAN BOY, IN A DARK TIME, WHITE CROSSES, LAURA, ORCHARD, and SUNDOWN, YELLOW MOON; the fiction collection JUSTICE; the poetry collection, LATE ASSIGNMENTS, and the chapbook of poetry LEAVING DAKOTA. Watson’s fiction has been published in ten foreign editions, and has received prizes and awards from Milkweed Press, Friends of American Writers, Mountain and Plains Booksellers Association, Mountain and Plains Library Association, New York Public Library, Wisconsin Library Association, Critics’ Choice, and The High Plains Book Award. The movie rights to MONTANA 1948 and JUSTICE have been sold to Echo Lake Productions and WHITE CROSSES and ORCHARD have been optioned for film. LET HIM GO was made into a film starring Kevin Costner and Diane Lane in 2020.

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the Eau Claire Community Foundation’s John and Betsy Kell Family Fund!

To craft a lasting story, a writer has to do more than check all the boxes. Does it have a compelling character? Check. Does it have a plot with a strong cause and effect? Check. That kind of editorial checklist will lead to a story that is merely competent. Why is this character in this particular predicament? How does an internal conflict manifest in an external action/setting? Those are the kind of questions that will lead you toward a story that will stick with readers. In this craft talk we will look at the connections between plot and character, between character and setting, and between setting and theme, etc., and strengthen the connective tissue between the various aspects of fiction.

Phong Nguyen is the author of three novels: The Bronze Drum (forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing, 2022), Roundabout: An Improvisational Fiction (Moon City Press, 2020), and The Adventures of Joe Harper (Outpost19, 2016, winner of the Prairie Heritage Book Award); and two short fiction collections: Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History (Mastodon Publishing, 2019) and Memory Sickness and Other Stories (Elixir Press, 2011). He is the Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing at the University of Missouri, where he teaches fiction-writing.

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the Eau Claire Community Foundation’s John and Betsy Kell Family Fund!

Even for those of us raised there, it's easy to dismiss America's rural spaces as cultural deserts, devoid of the intrigue we afford the cities or the coasts or the exotic landscapes of the imagination. In this session, author Carson Vaughan will present the genesis of his first book, Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream, and his work as a freelance journalist focused on rural culture.

Carson Vaughan is a freelance journalist from central Nebraska with a focus on the Great Plains.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker (online), The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Paris Review Daily, Outside, Pacific Standard, VICE, In These Times, and more. Most recently, he was awarded the 2018 John M. Collier Award for Forest History Journalism from the Forest History Society for his Weather Channel feature, “Uprooting FDR’s ‘Great Wall of Trees.’” He was also a recipient of a 2018 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Nebraska Arts Council.

His first book, Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream, was published by Little A in April 2019 and earned a 2020 Nebraska Book Award for Nonfiction (Investigative Reporting) from the Nebraska Library Commission.

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the Eau Claire Community Foundation’s John and Betsy Kell Family Fund!

James Baldwin said that the “hardest” and “most fearful” thing in the world for the writer is simplicity. This is especially the case for writers who write about race. In this craft talk, David Shih shares how he came to understand that his worst, most convoluted writing about race revealed a fear of telling the truth. He will discuss how this realization guides his approach to completing his current nonfiction book project.

Co-sponsored by the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library.

Zoom Info:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82877418258?pwd=ODAwRUY0S0Rld0FuUU1HdXFGL1dPUT09

Meeting ID: 828 7741 8258

Passcode: 566520

For more visit: https://www.facebook.com/events/1471310039737335/

****Please note Meeting ID and Passcode for entrance***

Meeting ID: 886 3826 7523
Passcode: 602055

In this craft talk, Barrett Swanson will discuss the role of personal material in longform narrative journalism, using his recent cover stories in Harper's Magazine to discuss the ways in which the "I" necessarily takes on many guises in creative nonfiction. He'll also share tips on pitching stories to editors and navigating the contemporary magazine world.

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library.

Barrett Swanson is a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine. He was the recipient of a 2015 Pushcart Prize, and his short fiction and essays have been distinguished as notable in Best American Short Stories (2019), Best American Nonrequired Reading (2014), Best American Essays (2014, 2015, 2017, and 2019) and Best American Sports Writing (2017).

You finished your book! Congratulations! But once you find an agent, you may need to make some changes. And your editor will want even more changes. Then there's copy editing. And once the book is out, you'll still find edits you wish you'd made. In this talk, author Christina Clancy will discuss the editing process for THE SECOND HOME, her recently released novel.

Co-sponsored with the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library.

How do we conjure our long forgotten stories?  And how can we recall those details that thought had vanished from our memories?  There's hope!  And technique, too!  Join author B.J. Hollars for a series of generative writing prompts sure to spur your memory, bring your past to the present, and help you write your life's story.

B.J. Hollars is the author of several books, most recently Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country, The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders,  Flock Together: A Love Affair With Extinct Birds, and From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us About Life, Death, and Being Human. Hollars is the recipient of the Truman Capote Prize for Literary Nonfiction, the Anne B. and James B. McMillan Prize, the Council of Wisconsin Writers' Blei-Derleth Award, and the Society of Midland Authors Award. He is the  founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He lives a simple existence with his wife, their children, and their dog. 

Co-sponsored by: Chippewa Valley Writers Guild and local literary journal Barstow & Grand.

We’ve all faced it: the heart-sinking rejection letter informing us that our work is “not a good fit.” How, though, might we turn this dispiriting moment of the writing process into an opportunity?  Join local writers for an evening of back-to-back events on the subject.

6PM: If At First You Don’t Succeed: A Conversation on Persevering Beyond Rejection

 How might we best cope with literary rejection?  And how do we find the path forward?  Join writers and editors Eric Rasmussen, Elizabeth de Cleyre and Katie Venit for a candid conversation on strategies and best practices for transforming “literary lemons” into lemonade.  Moderated by B.J. Hollars.

 7PM: Befriending Failure: Lessons from the Whitman School of Condemnation, Defamation, Denunciation, and Vilification, or So You Think You’ve Been Rejected?

In 1855, only one person on earth considered Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass worthy of publication. That person was Whitman, who printed the book himself. Early reviewers compared the writer to a pig, a goat, a lunatic, and those were the polite reviews.  Two hundred years after Whitman’s birth, the book is widely regarded as one of the great works of American literature. Given that failure is a writer’s constant companion, maybe Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and others can teach us something about not necessarily accepting, but at least befriending failure. Presented by former Wisconsin Poet Laureate Max Garland.  

Special thanks to our co-sponsor, the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library.

Presenter Bios:

Max Garland is the author of The Word We Used for It, winner of the 2017-18 Brittingham Poetry Prize. Other books include The Postal Confessions, winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry; Hunger Wide as Heaven, which won the Cleveland State Poetry Center Open Competition, and a chapbook, Apparition, from the University of Wisconsin Press. His poems, essays, stories, and interviews have appeared in journals such as Poetry, New England Review, Gettysburg Review, and many other journals, anthologies, and newspapers. His poetry has been regularly featured on Wisconsin Public Radio. Garland is a graduate of Western Kentucky University and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and is a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Eric Rasmussen didn’t used to get rejected so often, with a nearly perfect record on a lifetime’s worth of job, school, and scholarship applications. But then he started writing. He earned his MFA in fiction from Augsburg University, founded the regional literary journal Barstow & Grand, and was recently hired as the fiction editor for the online journal Sundog Lit. His work has been featured in various publications, including Fugue, Gulf Stream, Pithead Chapel, South Carolina Review, and frequently appears in Volume One. These endeavors, along with his attempts to publish a novel, have earned him somewhere north of 1,300 rejections.

Elizabeth de Cleyre is a writer, editor, creative consultant, clothing designer, personal stylist, bookstore co-founder, and somewhat hard to keep up with.

Katie Venit is a writer in Eau Claire. Her work has been published in Volume One, Wisconsin Life, and many other venues.

The New York Times Book Review hailed Jennifer L. Knox’s most recent work, Days of Shame and Failure, as a book that “hits with deceptive ease, all the poetic marks a reader could want: intellectual curiosity, emotional impact, beautiful language, surprising revelation and arresting imagery.” Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, among many other publications. On April 10, join Jennifer for a reading and discussion on the surprises of poetry.

Co-sponsored by the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library and the UW-Eau Claire English Department.

How do you pen the perfect children's book?  And how do you find the perfect press to publish it?  Join children's and middle grade authors Caroline Akervik, Julie Bowe and Becky Wojahn (W.H. Beck) for a panel discussion on a range of topics in the children's writing world: from who hires the illustrator to how to make a living in stories. Moderated by author Rob Reid.

Caroline Akervik is an elementary school librarian and an author of middle grade and young adult fiction. She agrees with C.S. Lewis that "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." Her works include White Pine, A Horse Named Viking, and the soon-to-be released young adult novella, Summer Snow. Caroline and her sister, Ruth Rankin, are coauthors of the Halcyon: A Sentinel Novel, a young adult science fiction novel.

Julie Bowe is the author of the Friends for Keeps series and the Victoria Torres, Unfortunately Average series. Her first novel, My Last Best Friend, won the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People and was a 2010 Barnes & Noble Summer Reading Program book. Her newest middle-grade novel, Big & Little Questions (According to Wren Jo Byrd), is receiving a warm welcome from reviewers, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

W.H. Beck (Becky Wojahn) is the author of award-winning humorous middle grade mysteries, like Malcolm at Midnight and Malcolm Under the Stars, and nonfiction picture books, like Glow: Animals with Their Own Night-Lights. She likes her stories with a dose of mystery and a dash of wonder.

In Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir she states, “In memoir the heart is in the brain . . . self-awareness and faith in the power of truth gives you courage to reveal whatever you unearth” regardless of how you come out looking. This craft talk will focus on how using scene, form, and revision can help memoir and nonfiction writers represent themselves, their companions, and place with honesty and complexity. Using her experience writing Daughter in Retrograde: A Memoir Courtney will share her own process and answer questions.

Courtney Kersten is the author of Daughter in Retrograde a memoir forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press in 2018. Her essays can be seen or are forthcoming from River Teeth, Brevity, The Normal School, Hotel Amerika, DIAGRAM, The Sonora Review, Black Warrior Review, The Master’s Review, and elsewhere.Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, an AWP Intro Award, and she was the 2016 Writer-In-Residence at the Great Basin Writer’s Residency in Baker, Nevada. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Idaho where she was awarded a Grace/Nixon Fellowship and the Writing in the Wild Fellowship. She has also been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Riga, Latvia, where she researched Baltic performing arts and literature. 

If you need a sign language interpreter for this event, contact chippewavalleywritersguild@gmail.com a week ahead and we’ll try our best to make it happen.”

Words hold weight, and when used effectively, have the power to heal, help, and inspire.  But how do we find the right words to address the most pressing moral issues of our day?  How can we “preach the gospel” of tolerance, diversity, and inclusivity without moralizing the message? Join representatives and religious scholars from a spectrum of faiths for a conversation and craft talk on how we can change our world for the better, one word at a time.  This event made possible by the generous support of the  Mahmoud S. Taman Foundation

Featured Panelists:

Bob Lesniewski oblSB is a Benedictine Oblate. Bob now follows the daily " Rule of St.Benedict" that includes prayer, work and service, Lectio Divina, quiet time for reflection and conversation with God.  Bob is the retired Area Director for Special Olympics. Currently he is a sub Teacher and Organizer for the Inter-Faith Prayer Services.

Rev. Julianne Lepp is the Minister for the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Eau Claire. She graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1996 with a B.A. in International Studies and a minor in Psychology. Her previous professional experience was primarily in finance.Graduating from Candler School of Theology in May 2010 with a Masters in Divinity, she concentrated on themes of Leadership and Community. While in seminary she also completed her UUA ministerial internship at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Atlanta where she gained rich experiences in religious education, worship, justice work, and small group ministry. While in Atlanta, Julianne also worked as a summer chaplain at Crossroads Community Homeless Ministry.

Dr. Asha Sen is a professor of postcolonial studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.  Her recent monograph *Postcolonial Yearning: Reshaping Spiritual and Secular Discourses in Contemporary Literature* (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) focuses on the ways in which postcolonial aesthetics are becoming more influenced by faith-based traditions like Sufism and Buddhism.  She is currently engaged in researching the adoption of spiritual traditions by postcolonial women authors in their attempts at effecting social change. 

Dr. Charlene Burns is Professor of Philosophy & Religious Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where she has taught since 2001. She is the author of three books, more than forty journal articles, and editor of one volume of essays. She is currently working on her next book which explores the life and sermons of the Right Reverend Stephen Elliott, first bishop of Georgia (1841-1866) and the Presiding Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, Confederate States of America to reveal the ways Christians have interpreted scripture to justify slavery and warfare.

The L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire will highlight the local writing scene and writer resources at an upcoming event, “Write Here, Write Now: A Celebration of Local Writing,” on Saturday, November 11 starting at 1 p.m. The library will host several panel presentations by local writers and publishers as well as a writers reception. Then, the celebration will make its way down Dewey Street to The Gallery at The Oxbow for a public reading by selected local authors. All events are free of charge; books will be available to purchase.

Click here or see below for a complete list of panels and presentations.

Meet the Chippewa Valley Local Authors
1–1:45 p.m. | Eau Claire Room
Panelists: Julie Court, Dennis Miller, Steve Nelson, CeCelia Zorn. Moderated by Bill Callaghan.

The ABC’s of Reading: A Practical Guide to the Art and Deadly Craft of the Literary Reading
2–2:45 p.m. | Eau Claire Room
Panelists: Max Garland, BJ Hollars, Katie Vagnino

Publishing Near and Far: A Conversation on Finding the Right “Fit” for Your Work
3–3:45 p.m. | Eau Claire Room
Panelists: Eric Rasmussen, Jason Splichal, Bruce Taylor, Serena Wagner, Alexander Zitzner.

Writers Reception
4–4:45 p.m. | Art Gallery, Second Floor Mezzanine

Writers Read
5:30–6:30 | The Gallery @ The Oxbow

How do you find the heart of a human story?  To get to the bottom of the hard-to-find truth?  Join veteran Leader-Telegram reporters Julian Emerson, Dan Lyksett and Eric Lindquist as they offer tips and tricks for writing nonfiction, uncovering the story, and most of all, forging professional relationships with subjects."

Speculative fiction is a strange catch-all genre. What does it mean? What counts as speculative fiction and (perhaps more importantly) how do you write it and sell it? From science fiction to fantasy to horror, speculative fiction is a wide field that thrives on imagining different worlds, and on imagining our world differently. Find out if speculative fiction is right for you and discover your own answer to the question, "Why speculate?"

Click here to read Charles's work.

Writers need other writers. We challenge each other. We commiserate with each other. We connect and network and create opportunities for each other. Putting words on a page may be a solitary pursuit, but becoming a better (and published!) writer is not. This craft talk will feature a discussion of opportunities for connecting with writers locally, nationally, and online.  Participants will receive tips for making the most of those connections, maximizing the time they have available for writing communities, and how to turn those investments into writing and publishing success.

To read Eric's work click here.

All stories are fueled by conflict, but in some stories that conflict can be personified as a villain, a bad apple, an agitator, a liar, a usurper, a creep.  In this session we will talk about the uses of villains in stirring up stories, and how one might go about creating a villain, employing a villain and maybe even humanizing a villain.  We'll look at different sorts of entry points for villains in stories and how one might hope to neutralize a villain, in the end.

How BAD can you be?  Come join Allyson Loomis and your fellow writers to find out!

To sign up for Allyson's summer residency at Cirenaica ("Stranger than Fiction: On Writing Narrative Nonfiction and Memoir"), click here!

Join Drs. Katherine Schneider and CeCelia Zorn-- both local, self-published authors-- as they explore the many facets of self-publishing  to help you decide if it's for you.  Presenters will describe the pros and cons of self-publishing, as well as offer insight on crucial author decisions, from choosing a publisher to marketing one's book.  

If you need disability accommodation for the program, please contact Katherine Schneider two weeks in advance of the session at schneiks@uwec.edu.

Facebook event

For more on Kathie's work, click here.

For more on CeCelia's work, click here.

Photo credit: www.literalis.net

Three prolific local songwriters, Billy Krause, Jerrika Mighelle, and Evan Middlesworth will share some of their songs, and discuss the perils and pleasures (but also the nuts and bolts) of songwriting—what comes easy, what comes hard, using examples from their own recent compositions. The event will be moderated by former Wisconsin Poet Laureate, and current Eau Claire Writer-in-Residence Max Garland.

Is there a novel inside you? Let it out this November by taking on the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge! For all writers (from aspiring to published), the goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Impossible? Not at all. NaNoWriMo is just the motivation you need to write that novel trapped inside you! Learn how NaNoWriMo works, how to prepare for it, and get helpful tips and tricks from Aimee Johnson - a participant for 10 years running and the Municipal Liaison for the Eau Claire regional NaNoWriMo chapter.

Now that you’ve written my manuscript, what do you do next?  Join literary agent Erik Hane of the Minneapolis-based literary agency Red Sofa Literary for an evening of questions, conversations and discussions on what it takes to find the right agent to bring your book into the world