This year’s Ithaca’s Spring Writes Literary Festival is May 4-7. It’s a fabulous, not-to-be-missed weekend, and the entire festival is free and open to all. If you’re in the area, please consider attending.
I’ll be on two panels:
11:00 – 12:15pm
History Center
Panel: World Building: If You Build It, They Will Come
A panel discussion by genre fiction writers Doreen Alsen, E.C. Barrett, Cara DiGirolamo, Jackie Swift and Gigi Vernon on the ins and outs of world building. Come learn how these authors create rich, believable worlds in a variety of genres including science fiction, fantasy, romance, historical fiction, and more.
Doreen Alsen writes contemporary romantic comedy. Her seventh book, Worth A Thousand Words, came out in September, 2016.
E.C. Barrett writes weird and macabre speculative fiction. She teaches writing at the Community School of Music & Arts and is a freelance journalist.
Cara DiGirolamo is a graduate student in linguistics, with a particular interest in how our world is shaped through language, and how writers use language to shape their worlds.
Jackie Swift creates science fiction and fantasy worlds by harnessing poetic inspiration and science to blind leaps of faith via binary code. Also, she’s a freelance writer and editor.
Gigi Vernon is an historical crime fiction author and a class of 2016 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies.
12:00 – 1:15pm
CAP ArtSpace
Intimate Communities: Starting and Sustaining a Writing Group That Works
Writing groups can be an essential part of the writing life, a supportive mini-community to help you develop your writing projects and goals. They can also be challenging to create and sustain. Authors Kathy Henion, Angie Pelekidis, Aimee Lehman, Bob Proehl and Gigi Verson share their experiences forming and/or participating in writing groups, including how these groups were essential in drafting, revising, and/or publishing their work. They will also discuss how to find or create a group and provide practical strategies for organizing, dividing time wisely, and critiquing fairly.
Kathryn Henion’s fiction has appeared in Saranac Review, Natural Bridge, & Green Mountains Review, among others. Currently she reads fiction and serves as a production editor for the online journal of art and literature Drunken Boat.
Angie Pelekidis worked in public relations before receiving her Ph.D in Creative Writing from Binghamton University. Her dissertation won the Distinguished Dissertation Award and her work has appeared in The Michigan Quarterly Review, Confrontation, The Masters Review, and other journals
Bob Proehl is the author of the novel, A Hundred Thousand Worlds, was a 2012 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and a 2013 resident at the Saltonstall Arts Colony.
Gigi Vernon is an historical crime fiction author and a class of 2016 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of magazines and anthologies.
