West Virginia Writers Fall Conference

This year’s West Virginia Writers Fall Conference will feature eleven workshops from seven authors. The event is open to the public for a cost of $25 for members of West Virginia Writers and $50 for non-members, It will take place on Saturday, November 6 from 9:30 A.M. until 4:00 P.M. at the Cabell County Public Library at 455 9th Street in downtown Huntington. Masks and social distancing will be required. Online registration is available through the West Virginia Writers website at https://wvwriters.org/fall-conference/

2021 West Virginia Writers Fall Conference Presenters

Daniel J. O’Malley is a writer whose fiction has appeared in Granta, Gulf Coast, Subtropics, Alaska Quarterly Review, Meridian, The Baltimore Review, and 2016’s Best American Short Stories, among other publications. In 2020 his story “Simon” was a finalist for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. He earned a BA in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida. Currently he teaches in the English Department at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, where he was recently named as the city’s inaugural Literary Laureate.

Cat Pleska, award-winning author, educator, president of Mountain State Press, and oral historian, holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing and an MA in Humanities. Her memoir, Riding on Comets was published by West Virginia University Press, 2015. Cat edited three anthologies and her essays have appeared in Still: The Journal, Heartwood Magazine, Change 7 Magazine, and many others. She teaches full time in the English department at Marshall University.

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including The Prisoners, Ultra Deep Field, and I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, as well as the novels States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. He earned his B.A. from Marshall University and his J.D. from West Virginia University. He serves as Senior editor at The Adirondack Review and Associate Editor at The Evening Street Review. His poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, J Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other journals. His awards include the Robert Bausch Fiction Award and a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts. In addition, he was locked up for five years in the West Virginia prison system, an experience which has been the basis for much of his writing. He currently resides in Charleston, West Virginia.

Doc Benson has produced, directed, and even starred in films screened at top international film festivals, received multiple Best Director and Best Screenplay awards, and has been privileged to see his films receive distribution worldwide. He has also served as a television producer, station manager, newspaper journalist, and script doctor, and is a past recipient of the Top Columnist award from the West Virginia Press Association. He holds advanced degrees in Business and Ministry and serves as president of the non-profit Appalachian Cinematic Arts Council.

Douglas John Imbrogno is a lifetime storyteller in words, image, and video. He was a feature writer, feature editor, and multimedia producer for the Charleston Gazette and Gazette-Mail for 35 years, and in the last 15 years of that time was an evangelist for multimedia storytelling. He currently edits the multimedia monthly magazine WestVirginiaVille.com, and for the last year has produced short-form and long-form narrative documentaries shown at filmfests worldwide.

Erin Novotny, writing as Tobi Doyle, is a hybrid romance author and has published over a dozen romance books. She writes HEAs with heat and humor, romantic suspense, and cozy mysteries. A member of the RWA’s Pen to Paper committee, she’s also the current President of RWA’s romantic suspense chapter, Kiss of Death, a member of Central Ohio Fiction Writers, West Virginia Writers and other local writing groups.

Michael Connick was born and raised in San Francisco, lived in Europe and the Middle East, and has lived in WV for the past 13 years. Now retired, his career included work in the US intelligence community, the Department of Defense, and the technology industry. He was a Contributing Editor to the technology magazine PalmPower. Michael has published three Cold War spy novels and a crime novel set in Huntington. His work also appears in ThrillWriting, The Writer’s Guide to Weapons, and Artistic License Renewed. For more information, visit http://michaelconnick.com

2021 West Virginia Writers Fall Conference Workshops

Fine-tuning Stories for Publication
MMM–Good! Food writing in memoir
Boom! Knock’em out with flash nonfiction
Submitting Work for Publication
Poetry Process and Strategies
Scripts that Sell: Screenwriting Tips for Indie Success
Compelling Characters for Audiences and Actors
STORYTELLING: From Campfires to Computers
Using Emotional Wounds to create characters and stories your readers can’t put down
What your readers really want…cognitive science and genre fiction
Powerful Promotional Ideas for Authors

For further information, please contact michaelconnick@gmail.com