(MIDDLETOWN, CT) – Wesleyan University will host its annual Writers Conference, one of the nation's oldest and most distinguished writing programs, on campus from June 20–25th. The conference is now accepting registrations for its 48th week-long session.
Featured speakers will include Norman Rush, author of a trilogy of stories and novels exploring the contemporary Western presence in southern Africa. Two books in Rush's trilogy have received the National Book Award–the story collection Whites, and the novel Mating. Robert Stone, National Book Award winner and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, will read from his highly praised novel Bay of Souls, which links life on the Plains with vodoun practices in the Caribbean. Both talks are open to the public.
Other speakers include Philip Gourevitch, who reports on the presidential campaign for The New Yorker; Colson Whitehead, fiction writer and MacArthur award winner; New Yorker profile writer Larissa MacFarquhar, author of a recent piece on the director Quentin Tarantino; poets Peter Gizzi and Maggie Nelson; Elizabeth Schmidt, poetry editor of the The New York Times; and editors, publishers, and agents.
The Conference invites a range of participants: people who love to read or want to find a writing group, beginning writers, and experienced writers such as journalist Tom Hallman, who credits his recent Pulitzer Prize to the help he received at Wesleyan University: “I give hope to every writer who attends your conference,” he says.
The conference's program includes seminars, lectures, readings, workshops, talks with editors and agents, and (optional) manuscript consultations.
Daily seminars will focus on the novel, short story, fiction-and-autobiography, poetry, literary journalism, and memoir. Seminars will be taught by a faculty of award-winning writers including: fiction writer Chris Offutt, author of the recent memoir No Heroes, fiction writer Roxana Robinson; Alexander Chee, author of Edinburgh, and winner of a 2003 Whiting Writers Award; poet Elizabeth Willis, whose collection Turneresque won the National Poetry Series, nonfiction writer Lis Harris, author of the expose, Tilting at Mills: Green Dreams, Dirty Dealings, and the Corporate Squeeze; and Jonathan Schell, internationally known journalist.
To register or request a conference brochure, contact Anne Greene, conference director, at (860) 685-3604 or agreene@wesleyan.edu. Wesleyan Writers Conference information is also available online at http://www.wesleyan.edu/writers
