Here are descriptions for the 2022 603 Writers’ Conference classes, panel discussions, and the pitch party:
Full Descriptions for the 2022 603 Workshops |
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| Please choose one workshop from this list. | |
| 10:45-12:15 | Workshops(Pick one class from the following list:)
 In this one-and-a-half-hour workshop, you will learn how to "see" an image, move it into an event, and then to reflection. The move to reflection is what I call "writing into the gap." Reflection is the way you collaborate with your reader and bring her to a new understanding. It's the lifeblood of memoir. You will begin with two concise warm-up exercises to get you present and settled. Then, you will proceed to a more complex activity. What you are doing today is opening a door into any personal writing, flash, essays, and or a longer manuscript. Sandell Morse is the prize-winning author of the memoir, The Spiral Shell, A French Village Reveals Its Secrets of Jewish Resistance in World War II (Schaffner Press, April 2020). Morse’s nonfiction has been noted in The Best American Essays series and published in Creative Nonfiction, Ploughshares, the New England Review, Fourth Genre ASCENT, Solstice, Tiferet, and more. The Spiral Shell is a Silver Medal winner in the Story Circle Women’s Book Awards, 2020.Morse has been a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, an Associate Artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, a resident at the Hewnoaks Artist Colony, and a Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She holds degrees from Wilson College, the University of New Hampshire, and Dartmouth College. Morse lives in Portsmouth, NH, with Zeus, her Standard Poodle. You can purchase The Spiral Shell at Gibson's Book Store.  Learn what successful indies do to market their books. We'll discuss:• The need to create the best book, the best cover, and the best synopsis you can. • Amazon categories, keywords, and rank and how they influence discoverability. • Building your brand using newsletters, a website, and social media. • Finally, we'll talk about advertising and offer resources for more information.  Ursula Wong's gripping fiction has appeared in popular magazines, journals and anthologies. Her Amber War series of historical thrillers begins with the little-known WW II story of Lithuania’s fight against the Soviet occupation and shifts to modern-day strife between Russia, Lithuania, and neighboring countries. For more information, visit her blog. You can purchase her works at Gibson's Book Store. In this workshop, you'll discover how to set up your writing career to publish and sell fiction or nonfiction, independent of other publishers. Whether you prefer to have your writing as a hobby or a business, Dale will present you with shortcuts to the learning required to sell books and make money. You'll go through the basics for getting books published in multiple formats and get valuable tips for better success and sales. You'll hear about what to do and what to avoid — no more waiting for an agent or publisher to make decisions about your future. You'll find out how to take control of the process.Takeaways: You'll have access to a valuable resource list for further learning.  Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, nonfiction including How to Be a Successful Indie Writer, and over 70 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher. Since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on "Jeopardy" (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the Sisters in Crime, and other writer organizations. He has traveled to all 50 states and several countries spanning half the globe from Hawaii to Greece and now lives with his family in Massachusetts. You can purchase A Darkened Room at Gibson's Book Store.In this interactive session, professional book editor and creative-writing coach Tanya Gold will share strategies to help you figure out how to make your manuscript even stronger. It will cover: • Identifying and articulating your book's thematic message, goals, and readership • Using these concepts to further craft and shape your story • Trying out systems that can help you keep track of and analyze key story elements • Creating a revision plan to help you maintain focus during your revisions There will be in-session exercises and worksheets for you to work through later. Just bring your manuscript outline, whatever you like to take notes on, and your favorite writing snacks.  Tanya Gold (she/they) is a book editor, writing coach, translator, and literary omnivore. She has been in publishing for about 20 years, and has worked on all kinds of cool books. These days, she works on fiction, memoir, graphic novels, interactive stories, and poetry.It has been suggested that she reads too much for her own good. This might be true. You can find Tanya on Twitter at @editortanya and learn more about her services at TanyaGold.com.  The best picture books are carefully crafted, with text and illustration working together to tell a story. Through a colorful and engaging presentation, Author-Illustrator Maryann Cocca-Leffler will talk about what it takes to write a successful picture book. She will share her process from ideas, through a manuscript to finished art, to selling her work to publishers. Maryann will talk about her path into publishing (she represents herself) and discuss the current climate and needs of the industry. Her recent entrance into writing nonfiction books grew from her passion as a disability rights advocate and the desire to bring this underrepresented group into the light.  Maryann Cocca-Leffler is an award-winning author and illustrator of over 60 books for children. A Kirkus reviewer said of Maryann, “Cocca-Leffler knows children inside and out.” Her new picture book, We Want to Go to School! The Fight for Disability Rights (AW) is co-authored with her daughter, Janine Leffler, and tells the true story of the people behind a 1972 landmark case, which ensured public education for all. Recent books include; The Power of YET (Abrams) and The Belonging Tree, (Christy Ottaviano Books). Upcoming 2022 books include her debut MG Novel, Heart Stones, and a picture-book biography on disability rights activist, Judith Heumann. Her daughter Janine inspired her to write the book, Janine. Together they have developed a corresponding website to help change public perception of children with disabilities: Janine's Party.Maryann grew up in the Boston area and has a BFA in illustration from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She lived in Amherst, NH, for 20 years, before recently moving to Portland, Maine. Visit her at www.maryanncoccaleffler.com. You can purchase We Want to Go to School (and her other works) at Gibson's Book Store.  Join Senior Literary Agent and author Jessica Reino as she pulls back the curtain on what makes a great story from an agent's perspective. Jessica will discuss what agents are looking for in queries and manuscripts. She will also discuss how to find a place in the market for your work.  Jessica Reino is currently a Senior Agent at Metamorphosis Literary Agency and a multi-genre author, including the award-winning writing manual, The Writer's Zen. Jessica has also worked as an author coach and a freelance substantive editor. She is a member of SCBWI New England and The Women's Fiction Writers Association, where she's been a Webinar Program Leader. She has also been a contributor for The Children's Writer's Guild Online Magazine and a reviewer for Story Monsters Ink. Jessica loves connecting with authors and other publishing professionals, so follow her on Twitter @JNRlitauthor, where she hosts a monthly chat, #TheWritersZen. All are welcome to join in. You can purchase The Writer's Zen at Gibson's Book Store.  This interactive presentation focuses on using mindful writing techniques to write poems. We begin with an overview of the basics of mindful writing, including impermanence, preconceptions about writing ability, monkey mind, and audience ghosts. With a more conscious approach to the writing moment, every moment can become a prolific moment. We discuss how to diminish writing worry from future- or past-oriented thinking and how to reside in the present moment to write with ease and joy. Participants practice several mindful writing techniques and leave the session with a new poem started.  Alexandria Peary (photo Courtesy of Jane Button Photography) serves as New Hampshire Poet Laureate. She is the author of nine books, including the poetry collections Control Bird Alt Delete, The Water Draft, Lid to the Shadow, Fall Foliage Called Bathers & Dancers, and, forthcoming in 2021, Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak. Her work has received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship, the Iowa Poetry Prize, the Slope Editions Book Prize, the Joseph Langland Prize, a Best of New Hampshire, and three Best of the Net nominations. Alex specializes in mindful writing: she is the architect and host of the popular mindful writing webinar at the National Council of Teachers of English as well as the author of Prolific Moment: Theory and Practice of Mindfulness for Writing and the TEDx talk, “How Mindfulness Can Transform the Way You Write.” As state Poet Laureate, Alex’s signature initiatives include the 2020 and 2021 editions of COVID Spring: Granite State Pandemic Poems, the 2021 North Country Young Writers’ Festival, and the establishment of the Jack & Hannah McCarthy Scholarship. Currently, she is collaborating with teen editors from across the state to form a new online literary magazine. For more information, visit NH Poet Laureate Blogspot and @NHPoetLaureate on Twitter. You can purchase Battle of Silicon Valley at Daybreak (and her other works) at Gibson's Book Store. Agents and editors aren't just looking for great stories — they're looking for great stories that can sell. Literary agent and the USA TODAY bestselling author Paula Munier reveals the tips, tricks, and techniques you can use to make sure your story can find a home in today's challenging marketplace. Please note: The material presented in this workshop is copyrighted and will not be recorded. Paula Munier is a literary agent and the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones was a Mary Higgins Clark Award nominee and named Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search, inspired by the real-life rescue of a boy with autism, also won a DWAA award. The Hiding Place debuted in March 2021. The Wedding Plot will come out in 2022. Paula credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep love of New England as her series’ major influences. Paula has also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Fixing Freddie and Happier Every Day. You can purchase Blind Search (and her other works) at Gibson's Book Store.Whether you’re writing a novel, a memoir, or a short story, All writers know how important it is to hook your reader in the first few paragraphs. This workshop will give you a chance to have your opening section reviewed by a panel of agents and writers who will tell you what’s working and what’s needed to compel your reader to flip to page two. If you could benefit from this kind of feedback, sign up soon! We will offer up to 2 classes, each of which will be limited to a maximum of 7 people to ensure each participant gets expert advice on making his or her story a page-turner right from the start. Each participant will be asked to submit no more than 300 words for review. Submit your draft here by May 27, 2022, with 603 FIRST IMPRESSIONS SUBMISSION in the subject line. Specify the genre you work in at the top of your document. All submissions must be double-spaced. Go the 603 Writers’ Videoconference registration site to sign up. About the panel:  While earning her B.A. in English and Marketing from the College of William & Mary, Hannah Strouth completed an internship at a boutique literary agency in Virginia, where she fell in love with this side of publishing. After graduating from the Columbia Publishing Course, she joined the Jane Rotrosen Agency as Office Assistant and soon after was promoted to Contracts Associate. Today, as assistant to Andrea Cirillo, Annelise Robey, and Kathy Schneider, she helps maintain their list of clients while keeping her sights set on actively growing her own list. Hannah is looking primarily for literary fiction, upmarket/commercial fiction, historical/biographical fiction, speculative/light magical realism, high-concept women’s fiction, and select romantic comedies. Books that dig deep into a wide range of emotions, leave her thinking deeply, and have her questioning human nature are the ones that capture her heart and make her most excited. She’s primarily driven by emotion and voice in a story, so the more heart-wrenching the better. Across all genres, she’s drawn to stories that help her discover and learn new aspects about people, places, events, herself, and grand concepts that have no defined answer. Alexandra (Ali) Lake is a young agent at Janklow & Nesbit Associates building her list in nonfiction, fiction, and YA. She loves books that show her a new corner of the world or an unexpected facet of human experience through an original, surprising voice. Her genres include YA, nonfiction, memoir, cookbook, literary, upmarket, fantasy, romantic comedy, and detective. Previous to joining J&N, she worked at ICM Partners. She has a BA in English and French Literature from Columbia University. Richard Adams Carey is the author of four books of literary narrative nonfiction, most recently In the Evil Day, which was optioned for film by London-based Island Pictures. "Against the Tide" won the New Hampshire Literary Prize for Nonfiction, and Raven’s Children was a New York Public Library Book to Remember. He regularly reviews books for the Wall Street Journal, and his journalism, essays, and short fiction have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, the Beloit Fiction Journal, Hunger Mountain, the Boston Globe Magazine, Yankee Magazine, Harvard Magazine, and elsewhere. He is past president of the New Hampshire Writers' Project and was assistant director of the Mountainview MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction program at Southern New Hampshire University. You can purchase In the Evil Day (and his other works) at Gibson's Book Store. Masheri Chappelle is the New Hampshire Writers’ Project Chair and member. A Smith Scholar graduate of Smith College, she received her B.A. in theater and writing. She is an award-winning playwright and novelist. Her novel, The Oracle Files: Escape, received the 2019 NH Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction. As a Story Guide, she utilizes her abilities as an intuitive consultant to assist authors with the development of their literary work. She is the owner of My Portalstar Publishing, which will launch in June 2022. My Portalstar Publishing develops and publishes fiction and nonfiction that feed the soul. |
| 1:00-2:00 | Panel Discussion: What Makes a Great Story? Panel Participants: Paula Munier, Jessica Reino, and Alison Weiss. |
| 2:00-2:30 | Break (log into pitch party session at 2:15) |
2:30-End The Pitch Party |
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| The Panel: Moderator and Judges: |
 Peter Biello, who will moderate the Pitch Party, is the host of All Things Considered and The Weekly New Hampshire News Roundup on New Hampshire Public Radio and a writer of short stories, novels, and radio journalism. His work has appeared in Gargoyle, Lowestoft Chronicle, and various NPR programs. He's the founder of the Burlington Writers Workshop, a nonprofit writing workshop in Vermont, and co-founder of Mud Season Review, a national literary journal. He lives in Concord, New Hampshire.  James Patrick Kelly has won a Nebula, awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America and two World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Awards. His most recent books The First Law of of Thermodynamics Plus (2021), a collection in PM Press’s Outspoken Author series edited by Terry Bisson, King Of The Dogs, Queen Of The Cats (2020), a novella from Subterranean Press, a collection, The Promise of Space (2018), from Prime Books, and a novel, Mother Go (2017), an audiobook original from Audible. In 2016 Centipede Press published a career retrospective Masters of Science Fiction: James Patrick Kelly. His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages.Jim’s plays have had productions in New York, Chicago, and Honolulu, among other venues, and his award-winning novelette, Think Like A Dinosaur was adapted for the television anthology series, Outer Limits. He has narrated fifty-two of his own stories for Audible.com as part of its StoryPod project. With John Kessel, he has co-edited five anthologies, including Rewired, the Post-Cyberpunk Anthology and Digital Rapture, the Singularity Anthology. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Find him on the web at www.jimkelly.net. Working for many years as a freelance substantive editor and being a multi-genre author herself, it is no surprise that Jessica Reino has a wide variety of tastes when it comes to storytelling. She's a member of SCBWI New England, The Women’s Fiction Writers Association where she was a Webinar Program Leader. She has also been a contributor for The Children’s Writer’s Guild Online Magazine as well as a reviewer for Story Monsters Ink. She has experience as an author coach and freelance editor with Pandamoon Publishing. She also runs a monthly Twitter chat #thewriterszen. Jessica is a Senior Literary Agent for Metamorphosis Literary Agency. Whether the story is tackling tough topics or serves solely to entertain, Jessica is looking for manuscripts that are well-written with a strong voice in order to make that emotional connection.  Alison Weiss has been in publishing for more than ten years. She’s currently acquisitions editor at Pixel+Ink (part of the Trustbridge Media Group), a publisher focused exclusively on series publishing with transmedia potential. There, she’s worked on many series, including Twig and Turtle by Jennifer Richard Jacobson, The Great Peach Experiment by Erin Soderberg Downing, and the forthcoming The Curious League of Detectives and Thieves by Tom Phillips. She’s run her own editorial consultancy, working with publishers including Simon & Schuster, Audible, and Arctis, as well as private clients, and was Editorial Director at Sky Pony Press, where her list included William C. Morris Finalist Devils Within by S.F. Henson, the Project Droid series by New York Times bestselling author Nancy Krulik and Amanda Burwasser, illustrated by Mike Moran, the Timekeeper trilogy by Tara Sim, and the Mahabharata-inspired Celestial Trilogy by Sangu Mandanna. In 2016 she was named a Publishers Weekly Star Watch Honoree. She’s been trying to live up to the title ever since. You can follow her on Twitter @alioop7 and learn more about Pixel+Ink at Pixel+Ink Books. |
The Prizes |
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| • 1st place: $250.00 • 2nd place: 1yr subscription to AutoCrit • 3rd place: 1 yr subscription to Scrivener • 4th place: free live webinar • 5th place: free live webinar |
2022 Overview
(Schedule and Keynote)
