SYLVA—NCWN-West and the Jackson County Regional Public Library will host A Day for Writers in Sylva on Saturday, Aug. 24.

The goal of this program is to bring the “best to the west” with reasonable fees so writers can benefit from membership. This year’s conference fees include coffee, pastries, soft drinks, water and lunch.

Register at https://ncwriters.org/ncwnsecure/reg/dayForWritersForm2019.php

C. Hope Clark, author of two mystery series and founder of Funds for Writers, will be the keynote speaker. Clark’s Funds for Writers Newsletter has 35,000 readers. She will present two sessions, one on marketing and one on writing fiction.

Joseph Bathanti, former poet laureate of North Carolina, is Writer-in-Residence of Appalachian State University’s Watauga Residential College, in Boone. Bathanti received the 2016 North Carolina Award in Literature. He is the author of 10 books of poetry. His most recent volume is “The 13th Sunday after Pentecost” (LSU Press, 2016). He will answer questions at the Author Panel on Marketing and Publishing.

Karen Paul Holmes, poet and teacher, will discuss “Metaphors, Images and Similes,” plus sit on a panel of authors to share her experience of publishing and marketing. Holmes has two full-length poetry collections, “No Such Thing as Distance “(Terrapin, 2018) and “Untying the Knot” (Aldrich, 2014). She was chosen a Best Emerging Poet by Stay Thirsty Media and appeared in their 2019 collection of 22 poets, including Billy Collins and Robert Pinsky.

Patricia Vestal and Katie Winkler will teach how to write a 10-minute play. Both writers have had  plays produced. NCWN trustee Winkler has taught English composition and British literature as an adjunct and full-time professor for over 23 years at Blue Ridge Community College. She has been active with the college’s drama department as a writer, actor and director.

Vestal has taught playwrighting at the college level and in workshops she developed as literary manager of an Orlando theater group. A member of the Dramatists Guild and the NC Writers’ Network, for which she is former co-Henderson County representative, she holds an MA in drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her plays were produced off-off Broadway and on NYC TV.

Carol Crawford, who owns www.carolcrawfordediting.com and is a published nonfiction writer and  poet, will explain to writers what to do before they submit a manuscript. Crawford teaches annually at the John C. Campbell Folk School as well as at conferences. She has been teaching creative writing for two decades. She is the author of “The Habit of Mercy, Poems about Daughters and Mothers,” and has been published in the Southern Humanities Review, Appalachian Heritage, the Concho River Review, the Chattahoochee Review and the Journal of Kentucky Studies, among others. Crawford has been program coordinator for the annual Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference since its inception in 1996.

Author David Joy will present “Writing Centered in Place/Landscape as Character.” His books have been highly praised as a voice of Appalachia. He hails from Jackson County, and his characters could live down the road from him, but, in fact, they are fictional. Joy is the author of the Edgar-nominated novel “Where All Light Tends to Go “(Putnam, 2015), as well as the novels “The Weight Of This World(Putnam, 2017) and The Line That Held Us (Putnam, 2018). He is also the author of the memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman’s Journey (Bright Mountain Books, 2011), which was a finalist for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the Ragan Old North State Award. He is known for writing flawed characters, showing the bad and the good in them.

Fees for this one-day writing conference isare $65 for members and $78 for non-members. Students pay only $35. Writers may join NCWN at the time of registration.

Register here.

If you prefer to register by mail, complete the registration form and mail with your check to Glenda Beall, PO Box 43, Hayesville, NC 28904.

All online registrations must be in by Aug. 19.