12th Annual Kentucky Writers Conference

12th Annual Kentucky Writers Conference
Friday, April 17, 2015
Knicely Conference Center
2355 Nashville Road
East Lobby Entrance
SESSION 1: 9-10:15AM
1. Dive Deep: Exploring the Depths of Point-of-View – Though every aspect of writing is critical in
producing a good story, one of the most important skills a writer can employ to craft a gripping
novel is Point of View. In this workshop, fiction veteran Virginia Smith guides writers through the
shallows—the basics of viewpoint, tense, and scope—and into the depths of Deep POV. Learn the
techniques of creating a strong affinity to your characters that will keep your readers up late at
night, turning pages to find out what happens next.
Virginia Smith is the bestselling author of twenty-four novels, an illustrated children’s book, and
over fifty articles and short stories. An avid reader with eclectic tastes in fiction, Ginny writes in a
variety of styles, from lighthearted relationship stories to breath-snatching suspense. Her books
have been finalists in ACFW’s Carol Award, the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence in
Mystery/Suspense, the Maggie Awards, and the National Reader’s Choice Awards. Two of her
novels, A Daughter’s Legacy (2011) and Dangerous Impostor (2013) received the Holt Medallion
Award of Merit.
2. Getting It Done: Productivity and Muse-wrangling for Writers – How does the working writer get it
done? Wrangling a fickle muse to meet a deadline—or just to get rid of that looming blank page—is
a life-skill for everyone who wants to get serious about their writing. Multi-published author Allie
Pleiter--who’s had to work on as many as four books simultaneously--shares the nuts and bolts of
how to manage your muse, set goals and deadlines, tackle the process of professional creativity, and
more. With a useful mix of the practical, the inspirational, and the nitty-gritty real life of it all, Allie
Pleiter shares her famous "Chunky Method" to give aspiring or working writers the tools they need
to make the magic happen.
An avid knitter, coffee junkie, and devoted chocoholic, Allie Pleiter writes both fiction and nonfiction. The enthusiastic but slightly untidy mother of two, Allie spends her days writing books,
buying yarn, and finding new ways to avoid housework. Allie hails from Connecticut, moved to
themidwest to attend Northwestern University, and currently lives outside Chicago, Illinois. The
“dare from a friend” to begin writing has produced two parenting books, twenty novels, and various
national speaking engagements on faith, women’s issues, and writing.
3. Oral History: The Importance of Capturing Stories for Historical Fiction – (Description is coming
soon)
Michael Morris is a fifth generation Floridian from Perry, Florida and the author of the award
winning novel, A Place Called Wiregrass. His second novel Slow Way Home, was named one of the
best novels of the year by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Author Pat Conroy calls Morris one of his “favorite Southern writers” and says Morris’s latest novel,
Man in the Blue Moon, set in Apalachicola, Florida, is “one of the best portraits of a small Southern
town I’ve ever encountered.” Publishers Weekly says the novel “is a magical and mesmerizing pageturner…with overtones of Flannery O’Connor and the rural Florida backdrop of Their Eyes Were
Watching God.” Publishers Weekly also named Man in the Blue Moon a best book of 2012. In
addition, the Alabama Librarian’s Association named the novel Fiction Book of the Year, and the
Southern Kentucky Book Fest selected for their 2013 SOKY Reads!, a community “one book” reading
program.
A finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, Morris’s essays have appeared in the Los
Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
SESSION 2: 10:30-11:45AM
1. Writing Fantasy - If you’ve ever wanted to write your own fantasy and also read some examples
from the best fantasy writers past and present, then this workshop is for you. We’re all familiar with
fantasy: Tolkien, Rowling, Martin, Brooks, and Jordan. But this workshop will also expand our
notions of what fantasy means. Sure we all like to read and write about dragons, orcs, and wizards,
but we’ll also go beyond those traditional notions of fantasy to explore a variety of subgenres: urban
fantasy, heroic fantasy, epic fantasy, as well as the New Weird.
David Bell is a bestselling and award-winning author whose work has been translated into six
languages. He’s currently an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University in
Bowling Green, Kentucky. His previous novels are Cemetery Girl, The Hiding Place, Never Come Back,
The Girl In the Woods, and The Condemned. He can be reached through his website
davidbellnovels.com.
2. Publishing Basics: How To Start the Daunting Process of Getting Your Work into Print – Are you
finally ready to start submitting your work to literary magazines, small publishers, and maybe even
agents? Do you have solid writing experience but haven’t yet felt ready or confident enough to put
your writing out there? If so, this is the workshop for you. In “Publishing Basics," author Molly
McCaffrey will review how to send your work to magazines, contests, publishers, and agents without
looking like an amateur who doesn’t know a slush pile from an ant hill. There will be time to draft
cover letters for magazines and query letters for agents and the chance to review the kind of first
sentence and first page that gets attention. (If you have a piece you feel is ready to submit, please
bring it.) The pros and cons of submitting to magazines and contests that charge reading fees will
also be discussed, and McCaffrey will outline the times when you should never pay to have your
work considered for publication. When you finish this workshop, you will not only be prepared to
submit your work, but also know that you’re not going to embarrass yourself (or waste your money)
doing so.
Molly McCaffrey is the author of a memoir about meeting her biological family called You Belong to
Us and a book of stories called How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters. She is also the coeditor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There and the founder of I Will Not
Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She received her Ph.D. from the
University of Cincinnati and had been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes, an AWP Intro Journals
Award, and Scribner’s Best of the Fiction Workshops. She currently teaches at Western Kentucky
University and works for Steel Toe Books in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where she lives with her
husband, novelist David Bell.
3. Going Long Form – Chracters, scenes, voice and setting are crucial to any story, but how does a
writer hold everything together as the word count mounts? Award-winning author Tim Wendel will
discuss such techniques in a presentation about long form writing.
Tim Wendel is a writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University. He has eleven books to his credit,
including novels and narrative nonfiction.
SESSION 3: 12:45-2:00PM
1. When Witches Fly, Which Way Should They Hold the Broom? Experiments with Genre
Conventions in YA and Adult Fiction – As fiction writers, we spend much of our time building worlds
that differ from the one in which we live. How do we decide which rules of reality to break? How
many is too many? What’s the difference between world-building in literary fiction and genre
fiction? This discussion-based glass will think through strategies for making (and breaking) the rules
of reality in your fiction process. Perfect for novelists and short-story writers across the spectrum,
from sci-fi to magical realism and everything in between.
Katherine Howe is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels and a nonfiction book
about witches. Her fourth novel, a historical thriller called The Appearance of Annie van Sinderen,
will be published by Penguin in September 2015. She has commented about history and fiction
writing on “Good Morning America,” “CBS This Morning,” the National Geographic Channel, and
NPR. Her fiction has been translated into over 20 languages. A native Texan, she lives in New
England and upstate New York, where she is at work on her fifth novel.
2. Developing Your Characters’ Emotional Back-Story – As fiction writers, we all want to create
characters that leap from the page and grab our readers by the lapels. We may begin by sketching
them in broad strokes: their external traits, their place in plot and trouble, their family relationships,
the cadence of their speech. As we flesh them out, our biggest hurdle can be avoiding flat
stereotypes. Both the purely evil demon and the good and gentle perfectionist are equally boring
and predictable. This workshop introduces techniques for getting at emotional back story that will
help you write specific, unique individuals that readers can believe in—even the seemingly demonic
or perfect ones. Come with pencil and paper (prefer no electronic devices, please, as we’ll be
sharing work) and perhaps a project you already have in progress. In addition to the techniques we’ll
practice in workshop, you will leave with instructions for further investigations into back story on
your own, a syllabus for further reading, and fresh ideas about at least one of your characters. To
learn more about Paulette Livers, please visit www.PauletteLivers.com.
Paulette Livers is the author of the novel Cementville (Counterpoint Press, 2014), winner of the Elle
magazine Lettres Prize, finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize (Center for Fiction), and
shortlisted for the Chicago Writers Association Fiction Book of the Year. She has received awards,
residencies, and fellowships from the Artcroft Foundation, Aspen Writers Foundation, Bedell
Foundation, Center for the American West, Denver Women’s Press Club, Key West Literary
Seminars, and Ox-Bow Artist Residence, among others. Her fiction and nonfiction have been
awarded the Meyerson Prize, Honorable Mentions from Hunger Mountain, Red Hen Press, and
Writers at Work, and have appeared in Southwest Review, The Dos Passos Review, Spring Gun Press,
and the audio-journal Bound Off. She is represented by Michelle Brower of Folio Literary
Management. A member of PEN America and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Livers lives in
Chicago.
3. The Poetry Gymnasium: A Workout for Your Poetry Muscles – Dr. Tom Hunley will lead the group
in writing exercises from his textbook The Poetry Gymnasium: 94 Proven Exercises to Shape Your
Best Verse (McFarland 2012).
Tom C. Hunley is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director
of Steel Toe Books. He is the author of four full-length poetry collections, two textbooks, and six
chapbooks. He is the co-editor, with Alexandria Peary, of Creative Writing Pedagogies for the
Twenty-First Century, forthcoming from Southern Illinois University Press. His work has appeared in
TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Five Points, River Styx, The Writer's Chronicle, The Writer,
and North America Review. He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.
SESSION 4: 2:15-3:30PM
1. More Than Slang – Perfecting the YA Voice – Award-winning YA author, Gaby Triana, discusses the
importance of writing about young adults, not for young adults. Learn to create authentic teen
characters who worry about authentic teen issues, characters who feel real and make you miss
them when the book is over. Come prepared for a writing exercise and discussion.
Gaby Triana is a YA author, writing workshop instructor, Regional Advisor for the Society of
Children's Books Writers and Illustrators, and freelance ghostwriter. Her novels for teens include
Summer of Yesterday (SimonPulse), Backstage Pass, Cubanita, The Temptress Four, and Riding the
Universe (HarperCollins), which have collectively earned the IRA Teen Choice Award, ALA Best
Paperbacks, and Hispanic Magazine’s Good Reads of 2008. Her obsessions include Halloween,
Disney World, hosting parties, designing mugs and wedding cakes, and watching Doctor Who with
her three boys. She has recently completed two more YA novels, a modern mash-up of The Legend
of Sleepy Hollow called Wake the Hollow and the magical Cakespell about a teen who inherits her
late grandmother’s matchmaking abilities through her baking. Her agent is Deborah Warren of
East/West Literary. Visit her at www.gabytriana.com, Facebook, and @GabyTriana on Twitter.
2. Using Family Materials When Writing Memoir – Many women, who tend to be left to clear out
houses when their owners have died, find troves of letters shoved onto shelves. What to do with
them? The writers are not well known and in fact may be long forgotten, but their letters capture an
important slice of the past. How to connect all these letters and, even more important, how to turn
them into art. Participants might want to read author Sallie Bingham’s recently published The Blue
Box: Three Lives in Letters, published by Sarabande Books. She will be using the text for examples of
her method.
Sallie Bingham published her first novel with Houghton Mifflin in 1961, shortly after graduating
from Radcliffe College. Since then she has published four collections of short stories, four novels, the
memoir Passion and Prejudice, and several plays, many of which have been produced. Bingham was
Book Editor for The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky and has been a director of the National
Book Critics Circle. She is the founder of The Kentucky Foundation for Women and The Sallie
Bingham Archive for Women's Papers and Culture at Duke University.
3. First Page Critique Workshop – An editor or agent will often remark that they know on Page One if
they'll continue reading a manuscript. This First Page Critique Workshop is a unique opportunity to
gain insight into the techniques involved in crafting an attention-grabbing first page. Anonymous
first pages will be chosen randomly, read aloud to the group, and Courtney C. Stevens and Kristin
O'Donnell Tubb will discuss the ever-important question: how do I keep readers reading?
Attendees of the workshop are highly encouraged to bring two copies of the first page of a
manuscript-in-progress. Please do not include your name on the manuscript and please use
traditional formatting (12-point font, double-space paragraphs), to guarantee enough time to cover
all attendees' stories. Positive critiques, thoughtful feedback, and constructive discussion of what
constitutes an excellent first page is the goal!
Courtney C. Stevens grew up in Kentucky and lives in Nashville, Tennessee. She is an adjunct
professor and a former youth minister. Her other skills include playing hide-and-seek, climbing trees,
and being an Olympic torch bearer. The Blue-Haired Boy (HarperImpulse) is a prequel novella for
Faking Normal. Her second full length novel, The Lies About Truth, will release in fall of 2015.
Kristin O’Donnell Tubb’s fantasy debut, The 13th Sign (Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan 2013, Square
Fish/Macmillan 2014), was called “the ultimate astrological fantasy” by Kirkus Reviews. It was the
winner of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators 2014 Crystal Kite Member’s Choice
Award and was a finalist for Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award for Children’s Fiction. Tubb is
also the author of Selling Hope (Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan 2010). In a starred review, Booklist said
it was “a bouncy tale populated by a terrific cast of characters.” It was a winner of SCBWI’s 2011
Crystal Kite Member’s Choice Award and a finalist for the 2012 National Homeschool Book
Award. Autumn Winifred Oliver Does Things Different (Delacorte Press/Random House 2008) was
selected by the Tennessee State Library to represent the state of Tennessee at the 2009 National
Book Festival and has been nominated for the Volunteer State Book Award (2011 – 2012 list). She
can be found far too often on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/kristin.tubb) and Twitter
(https://twitter.com/#!/ktubb). Oh, and she has a website, too: www.kristintubb.com.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

All sessions are held at the Knicely Conference Center. They are free and open to the public, but
seating is limited, so we ask that participants register ahead of time. Drop-ins are welcome, but
preference for seating will be given to registered attendees.

Online registration is available on the Southern Kentucky Book Fest website at
http://sokybookfest.org/about-2/writers-conference/.

If you prefer to stay on site during the lunch hour, there will be concessions available in the East
Lobby of the Knicely Conference Center.
DIRECTIONS
For Internet and GPS mapping services, use 2355 Nashville Road.
From WKU at University Blvd and Nashville Road: Travel 1.2 miles south on Nashville Road (31-W). Turn
right at Walgreen’s onto Campbell Lane. Go .2 miles, then turn right at the Knicely Conference Center
sign.
From Lexington/Louisville: Take I-65 south to the Natcher Parkway (Exit 20). Take the Natcher Parkway
north to Exit 6, 31-W (Franklin/Bowling Green.) Turn right onto 31-W (Nashville Road). Go 1.5 miles,
then turn left onto Campbell Lane. Go .2 miles, then turn right at the Knicely Conference Center sign.
From Nashville/Memphis: Take I-65 north to the Natcher Parkway, Exit (20). Take the Natcher Parkway
north to Exit 6, 31-W (Franklin/Bowling Green.) Turn right onto 31-W (Nashville Road). Go 1.5 miles,
then turn left onto Campbell Lane. Go .2 miles, then turn right at the Knicely Conference Center sign.
From Owensboro: Take the William Natcher Parkway South to Exit 6, 31-W (Franklin/Bowling Green).
Turn left toward Bowling Green onto 31-W (Nashville Road). Travel 1.6 miles and turn left onto
Campbell Lane. Go .2 miles, then turn right at the Knicely Conference Center sign.
SPECIAL THANKS TO THE PRESENTING SPONSOR FOR THE
2015 KENTUCKY WRITERS CONFERENCE