Tallahassee Writers Association

Save the date:
March 18-20, 2011
Monroe Street Conference Center and the Holiday Inn at the intersection of Graves Rd. and I-10. The MSCC is the site of the old Marie Livingston’s restaurant, which has been completely remodeled into a conference facility.

Keynote Speaker:

Cassandra King will deliver the keynote at the luncheon in the Monroe Street Conference Center ballroom on Saturday. King’s has four best-selling novels, including Making Waves in Zion, The Sunday Wife, The Same Sweet Girls, and Queen of Broken Hearts.

Featured Speakers:
• Fiction Intensive with James Scott Bell – author of Plot and Structure and Revision and Self-Editing, as well as dozens of novels
• Nonfiction Intensive with Lee Gutkind – called “the godfather of creative nonfiction,” author of The Art of Creative Nonfiction, Truckin’ With Sam, Almost Human: Making Robots Think; editor of Creative Nonfiction Journal
•Agent Intensive with Chuck Sambuchino – Author of Guide to Literary Agents and Screenwriter’s and Playwright’s Market, editor for Writers Digest Books

• Adrian Fogelin – the author of seven titles for middle-grade children, including Crossing Jordan and The Sorta Sisters;
• Donna Ballman – children’s author and author of Let’s Quill All the Lawyers
• Agent Katharine Sands

Acclaim from those attending the 2010 conference:
“informative, varied, well managed and entertaining”
“reignited my passion for writing”
“All the suggestions and techniques I heard are spinning in my head, and the ideas they
are generating are so exciting.”
“an ambitious, thorough, and helpful event for all of us writers”
“a very impressive event”
“fantastic event with a wide variety of great speakers”
“I belong to several different groups here in St. Pete and have been e-mailing all of them
about what a great time I had.”
“Donald Maass' Sunday session was especially valuable to me.”
“Can't wait to see what you have in mind for next year.”

Interested in speaking at a future Tallahassee Festival of Books and Writers Conference?
Contact conference@tallahasseewriters.net7 (manually remove the 7 before sending your message.)
Please send bio, website, and topics prepared to speak on. Note: no honorarium is offered for book festival appearances, but we do offer honorariums to out-of-town conference instructors when funds permit.

Would you like to be an event sponsor?

Be sure to check out the 2009 conference photos.

September Calendar

2 TWA Board meeting. 6:30 p.m. at Ted Simmons' home.

7 Carl Hiassen book signing at Barnes and Noble. 7 p.m.

14 Big Bend Poets meeting. 7 p.m. Barnes and Noble in the Tallahassee Mall.

14 Biography Basics for Picture Book Writers .

The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators presents Jan Annino. 7-8:30 p.m. at the Leon County Public Library on Park Ave.

16 TWA general meeting 6:30 p.m. at the American Legion Hall on Lake Ella. Robert Beard, a retired Florida State philosophy professor, will speak “Remarks on the Art of Writing.” Since joining the TWA four years ago, he has authored four books, including Astride the Sea Cow, The Runaway, and A Boy Named Shawn.

October Calendar

2 FREE “Writing a Poetic and Cinematic Novel” workshop. From 1-4 p.m. at the Leon County Public Library on Park Ave. in Program Room B. Led by Mary Jane Ryals, Big Bend Poet Laureate, whose first novel, Cookie and Me, comes out Sept. 5 (Kitsune, ISBN-13: 978-0-9819495-6-7; $15). Copies of her novel will be available for sale. The workshop is free and open to the public.

7 TWA Board meeting. 6:30 p.m. at Ted Simmons' home.

12 Big Bend Poets meeting. 7 p.m. Barnes and Noble in the Tallahassee Mall.
21 TWA general meeting 6:30 p.m. at the American Legion Hall on Lake Ella. Bruce Gamble will speak on how to take raw research data and turning it into compelling prose. His fourth non-fiction book, Fortress Rabaul, the Battle for the Southwest Pacific, has just hit the shelves. All of his books are based on military events.

22-24 Florida Writers Association Conference. Lake Mary, FL.

November Calendar

4-6 Other Words Con-ference. Flagler College campus in St. Augustine. Theme: “Writing About Something.” Contact Rick Campbell at rc2121@tds.net5 for details. (Remove the 5 at the end of the address before sending.)

18 TWA general meeting 6:30 p.m. at the American Legion Hall on Lake Ella. Lynne Knightis the author of four full length collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Again, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2009. Her collection Dissolving Borders, poems on love and loss, won a Quarterly Review of Literature prize in 2006. One of her poems was selected to appear in Best American Poetry, 2000.

Current Newsletter

Special Contest for

2011 Conference Attendees!

“It Was the Best of Times

but Worst of Lines”

Best (worst) opening lines of novels will be read Saturday night, March 19, at the Dinner with the Writers. Top (bottom) two will attend the dinner free, a $20 value.

Prizes for:

Dishonorable Mention

Worst Prize

Rules:

100 words or less

Typed, Times New Roman

Double-spaced

One-inch margins

Fee: $5 per entry

Submit up to 10 entries

Postmark deadline: Feb. 1, 2011

For each entry, submit two pages:

First page – your name, contact information and opening sentence

Second Page – opening sentence only

____________________________

Rhett DeVane and Senator Robert McKnight will sign copies of their political thriller, Accidental Ambition, at My Favorite Books, 1415 Timberlane Rd., Saturday, Oct. 30, from 2 to 4 p.m.

KiKi BelMonte-Schaller (K.B. Schaller) will speak and sign copies of her novel, Gray Rainbow Journey at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe Sept. 24. The novel was a National Best Books 2009 Award winner for multicultural Fiction and a finalist in both Mystery/Suspense and Religion. The sequel, Journey by the Sackcloth Moon, is due for publication this fall.

Survivor's Review, an online literary journal, will publish the first two chapters of Two Storms, by Iain Baird. His memoir tells of surviving both prostate cancer and Hurricane Katrina. The book is published by CyPress Publications.

Three book launches are lined up for Tide Water Talisman, the latest Luanne Fogarty mystery by Glynn Marsh Alam.

Saturday, Sept. 18, Alam will appear at The Bookshelf, 126 Broad St. in Thomasville, from 1-3 p.m. She will also appear in Tallahassee at My Favorite Books in Market Square Saturday, Sept. 25 from 1-4 p.m. and in Apalachicola at Downtown Books, 67 Commerce St., Saturday, Oct. 2 from 1-3 p.m. Her previous title, Moon Water Madness, won the gold medal for popular fiction from the Florida Book Awards.

Anne Petty's dark fantasy short story "Blade" received an Honorable Mention in Absent Willow Review's annual Short Story Contest. The winners are published in the August issue of Absent Willow Review. Link to the online version:

http://absentwillowreview.com/archives/blade

Donna Meredith is reviewing Southern fiction for the Southern Literary Review. You can sign up to receive emails when new material has been posted to the online journal.

See the latest post at
http://southernlitreview.com

Mary Jane Ryals

               Tallahassee Writers Association.Inc.
                P.O. Box 3428 | Tallahassee, Florida 32315-3428

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