WriteAngles Conference 2018 Registration Has Started

Registration for this year's WriteAngles Conference has opened. The conference will take place on Saturday, November 17 at the Willits-Hallowell Center at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA.

Morning Speaker - Andrea Hairston

Afternoon Speaker - Edie Meidav


8:15 to 9:00 am – Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00 to 9:30 am – Morning Keynote Speaker: Andrea Hairston (Morrison Room)

NOTE: Individual agent meetings will run concurrently with the morning panels, 9:45 to 12:30, by pre-arranged appointment.

PANEL SESSION I – 9:45 to 11:00 am (Choose one)

The Elemental Journey of Purposeful Memoir: Writing the Journey of Your Life (Morrison Room)
Workshop leader: Jennifer Browdy

Writing Sex (Andreola Room)
Panelists: Sacchi Green, Emily Nagoski, Jupiter’s Slut (moderator), Cecilia Tan

She Did What? Weaving the Elements of Fiction into a Story (Executive Board Room)
Panelists: Liz Bedell, Jennifer Jacobson, Ellen Meeropol (moderator), Lisa C. Taylor

PANEL SESSION II – 11:15 am to 12:30 pm (Choose one)

Writing the Short Story (Executive Board Room)
Panelists: Jennifer Acker, Linda Rowland-Buckley (moderator), Linda McCullough Moore, Kate Senecal

Just the Facts: The Ins and Outs of Writing Historical and Research-Based Fiction & Nonfiction (Andreola Room)
Panelists: Joy Baglio, Maxine Schmidt, Jacqueline Sheehan, Marya Zilberberg (moderator)

Open Mic (Morrison Room)
Moderator: Ilya Parker

12:30 to 1:30 pm – Buffet Luncheon

1:30 to 1:45 pm – Celebration of WriteAngles Community Grant (Morrison Room)

Legal Clinic 1:30 to 4:00 pm (concurrent with afternoon keynote speech and panels)

1:45 to 2:45 pm – Afternoon Keynote Speaker: Edie Meidav (Morrison Room)

PANEL SESSION III – 3:00 to 4:15 pm (Choose one)

Agents Panel: Successful Loglines (Morrison Room)
Panelists: Serene Hakim, Christine J. Lee, Julie Stevenson, moderator TBA

Publishing Your Poems (Executive Board Room)
Panel moderator: Gail Thomas

4:15 to 4:30 pm – Wrap-up (Morrison Room)
Names will be drawn for attendance prizes. You must be present to win

Visit the WriteAngles website for more information

Register for the 2015 WriteAngles Conference!

Registration is now open for the 2015 WriteAngles conference! The conference by writers, for writers will be held on Saturday, October 17 at Mount Holyoke College’s Willits-Hallowell Center in South Hadley, MA and offers participants the chance to mix with experienced writers and agents in panel discussions, face-to-face meetings and in casual networking opportunities.

Keynote speakers for this 30th writing conference are award-winning author Susan Stinson, and Carol Edelstein, author and co-director of A Gallery of Readers, a monthly reading series and independent press. WriteAngles 2015 offers eight new panels and workshops, opportunities for participants to meet one-on-one with an agent, and a new legal clinic. For more information, and to register, please visit writeanglesconference.com

W...W...W...Wednesdays - March 12

This meme was created by MizB at Should Be Reading. To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…


• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?

What are you currently reading?

I'm starting this one tonight.

Welcome to the Steampunk World of Regency…

…where the power of steam has already passed from the age of unsatisfactory experiments to the first country-spanning railways and ships that no longer sail at the whims of weather. Roberta Stephenson is the daughter of the ‘Father of Railways’…a girl almost raised in the engine works and through her experience, and education in the most advanced halls of Miss Mather’s Academy for Girls, is fit to become manager and designer at her father’s steamship yard on the Clyde.

And Britain needs Roberta’s expertise, for fate in this world has dealt more kindly with Napoleon, allowing him to extricate most of his army from Moscow in 1812, and granting him at least a draw at Leipzig in 1813. With developments of the steamships begun in France in 1783 he is ready to take one more gamble to rid himself of the interference of Perfidious Albion, and the island’s safety may depend on the steam powered rams Roberta is offering to their lordships of the Admiralty.

Complicating Roberta’s professional life are her romantic suitors: Lord Julian Bond, man about town and Admiralty spy; the enigmatic Symington Holmes; and Engineer Lieutenant Alfred Worthington RN. It seems that Roberta is destined to choose one of these gentlemen, but will she choose wisely?

What did you recently finish reading?

I just finished this book two nights ago. I stayed up until 2:30 a.m. even though I knew the alarm would be ringing at 6:30 because I could not put it down. I highly recommend this emotional and superbly written novel. My review will appear at The Children's and Teens' Book Connection on the 25th.

What's it like to be undocumented? High school senior M.T. knows all too well. With graduation and an uncertain future looming, she must figure out how to grow up in the only country she's ever called home... a country in which she's "illegal."

M.T. was born in Argentina and brought to America as a baby without any official papers. And as questions of college, work, and the future arise, M.T. will have to decide what exactly she wants for herself, knowing someone she loves will unavoidably pay the price for it. On the way, M.T. must navigate first love, letting go of her childhood friends as they begin a life she can't share, a difficult relationship with a father who grew up a world away and a mother struggling to find her way in America. What is it like when the only country you've ever known says you don't belong? The Secret Side of Empty offers an intimate, often surprising glimpse into a story you often hear on the news but have never heard told this way before.


Author Maria E. Andreu draws from her personal experience as a former undocumented immigrant to explore issues of belonging, keeping secrets and what it's like to be undocumented. More than that, The Secret Side of Empty is a story that will touch anyone who has ever felt excluded or unsure about the future or has kept a secret she felt was too big too share.

I also finally finished these two research books on Mount Holyoke College that I needed for a writing project.

What do you think you’ll read next?

I'm honestly not sure because it depends on how long it takes me to read Steam and Strategem. My next book for review that is due next month is the latest installment in F.M. Meredith's Rocky Bluff P.D. series, Murder in the Worst Degree, so it might be that.

The body that washes up on the beach leads Detectives Milligan and Zachary on a murder investigation that includes the victim’s family members, his housekeeper, three long-time friends, and a mystery woman.

Another WriteAngles Conference Come and Gone

It's hard to believe, but after months of hard work, this year's WriteAngles Conference is over. We had a ton of fun, and there were so many interesting panels to choose from, it was hard to decide what to do.

As registrar, I didn't get a chance to attend too many panels, but I did manage to take in the entire Writing Young Adult and Middle Grade Fiction one. D. Dina Friedman moderated this panel that included writers Jeannine Atkins and Lisa Papademetriou. I was so impressed with what these ladies had to say that I bought one of each of their books. If I were richer, I would have picked up more.

Add in two great keynote speakers and four fabulous agents and it was a wonderful day. The staff from the Willits-Hallowell Center at Mount Holyoke College did a superb job of creating a relaxing, pleasant setting for the conference, and once again, the food was phenomenal. After a short rest, I'm ready to do it all again.

Have you attended any writers conferences this year? What was your favorite part?

Book Review: The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson by Jerome Charyn

With The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel, award-winning author Jerome Charyn dares to dig deeper into the life of a woman who has captivated readers for generations.

Inspired by Dickinson's letters and poetry, this novel blends fact and fiction in a seamless way that allows the reader to believe every word Charyn has written is how it occurred.

The book opens in 1848, with a young Emily Dickinson as a seminarian at Mount Holyoke, where she falls in love with a fictional handyman known as Tom. Her fixation with Tom would follow her through much of her her life, despite the attention paid to her by other men.

Dickinson serves as the narrator of this tale, and Charyn emulated her voice to tell the story. The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson is not a book you will race through. While daring and bold, it's best to be treated like a cold glass of water after a strenuous activity--sipped, rather than gulped.

Some may be opposed to the liberties Charyn took in portraying the "Queen Recluse," but I found he painted a fascinating picture of one of my favorite poets. Admittedly, the book held additional charm to me because I live not far from where Dickinson grew up in Amherst and I attend a writers conference at Mount Holyoke every year. To see names, places, and publications I am so familiar with, made me feel at home when reading the book. It also inspired me to delve further into Dickinson's real life.

The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson portrays a passionate, witty woman who lived life fully, despite the confines of the society and times within which she was born and lived.


Title:  The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel
Author: Jerome Charyn
Publisher:  W.W. Norton and Company

Paperback
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 9780393339178
Pages: 352
Release: February 14, 2011

Hardcover
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 9780393068566
Pages: 348
Release: February 22, 2010

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Read an excerpt at Amazon!

Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works, Charyn has earned a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him “one of the most important writers in American literature.”

New York Newsday hailed Charyn as “a contemporary American Balzac,” and the Los Angeles Times described him as “absolutely unique among American writers.”

Since the 1964 release of Charyn’s first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letters by the French Minister of Culture.

Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until he left teaching in 2009.

In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn’s book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, "The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong."

Charyn lives in Paris and New York City. Visit him online at:

Website: http://www.jeromecharyn.com/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/jerome.charyn

Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeromecharyn

The book's Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/SecretLifeOfEmilyDickinson

The book's Twitter page: http://twitter.com/EmilySecretLife

The publisher's website: http://books.wwnorton.com/books/detail.aspx?ID=17221






I received a copy of this book through Nicole at Tribute Books and the author. This review contains my honest opinion, for which I received no monetary compensation.