Call for Creative Submissions

Auburn University and the Auburn Writers Conference invite writers to participate in “Myth, Memory, and the Haunted Muse” to be held on October 7-8, 2011, in Auburn, Alabama.

Offering instruction, practice, perspective, and community in a relaxed setting, AWC features small-group workshops, panel discussions, and readings from emerging and established authors.

This year’s theme, “Myth, Memory, and the Haunted Muse,” asks participants to consider the ways that writers use the idea of "the haunted" in their work—either literally or figuratively, as in the memories, histories, people, and places that haunt, and hence propel, characters.

The 2011 conference will feature three New York Times bestselling authors: keynote speaker Joshilyn Jackson (Gods in Alabama, Backseat Saints), Arts and Humanities Distinguished Speaker Mark Kurlansky (What?, Edible Stories, The World Without Fish), and Rachel Hawkins (Hex Hall, Demonglass).

Other visiting authors include young adult novelists Roger Reid (Longleaf, Space) and Victoria Schwab (The Near Witch), fiction writer Evelina Galang (Her Wild American Self, One Tribe), essayist Patricia Foster (All the Lost Girls: Confessions of a Southern Daughter), Richard Goodman, founder of the New York Writers Workshop (A New York Memoir, Soul of Creative Writing), and Wendy Reed, television and radio producer, and author of An Accidental Memoir: How I Killed Someone and Other Stories. Additional authors and workshop sessions will be announced via our website.

Conference attendees are invited to read their short fiction, creative nonfiction and/or poetry. To be considered for a reading slot, please submit a 300-500 word excerpt of creative writing appropriate for a 15-minute presentation by June 1, 2011. Please include a brief cover letter that indicates connection to the conference’s theme.

Email submissions as an MS Word attachment to Maiben Beard at meb0015@auburn.edu.

In the subject line of your email, please include: Conference: [Your Last Name, Title of Submission].

Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2011.

Save the Date!

The second annual Auburn Writers Conference will be held October 7-8, 2011.

Offering instruction, practice, perspective, and community in a relaxed setting, AWC features small-group workshops, panel discussions, and readings from emerging and established authors.

This year’s theme, “Myth, Memory, and the Haunted Muse,” asks participants to consider the ways that writers use the idea of "the haunted" in their work—either literally or figuratively, as in the memories, histories, people, and places that haunt, and hence propel, characters.

The conference website will be launched in April. In the meantime, join us on Facebook and Twitter.

We hope to see you there!

Thank you!

Thank you to all of our wonderful conference presenters and participants.

Podcasts of Saturday's panel sessions will soon be available on our website. In the meantime, check out Facebook and Flickr for photos and blog posts.

Dates for the 2011 Auburn Writers Conference are TBA. Stay tuned!

Featured Writer: Emma Bolden

Emma Bolden is the author of three chapbooks of poetry: How to Recognize a Lady, (part of Edge by Edge, the third in Toadlily Press’ Quartet Series); The Mariner’s Wife (Finishing Line Press); and The Sad Epistles (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as the Indiana Review, The Journal, The Greensboro Review, Feminist Studies, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, Verse, and on Linebreak.org. She was the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship for the 2008 Sewanee Writers’ Conference, as well as a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s First Book Prize and for a Ruth Lily Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation/Poetry magazine. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing at Georgetown College, where she serves as poetry editor of the Georgetown Review.

Featured Writer: Judy Troy

Judy Troy is the author of a story collection, Mourning Doves, and two novels, West of Venus and From the Black Hills. A l996 recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, Epoch, Best of the South, The Pen/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other journals and anthologies. She is Alumni-Writer-in-Residence at Auburn University.

Featured Writer: Dan Latimer

Dan Latimer received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has been co-editor ofSouthern Humanities Review since 1984 and specializes in European Romanticism, the History of Literary Criticism, the Symbolist Novel, and Children’s Literature. He is the author of Contemporary Critical Theory (1989) and has published articles in Modern Language Notes, Essays in Literature, New Left Review, and the New Orleans Revie. He received the Humanities Fund Award for Instructional Innovation in 1982 and in 1996 the Auburn University Faculty Achievement Award in the Humanities. He is a long-standing member of the Southern Humanities Council, which is dedicated to the promotion of the liberal arts in regional communities.

Featured Writer: Peter Huggins

Peter Huggins is an award-winning poet and the author of the picture book Trosclair and the Alligator, which has appeared on the PBS show Between the Lions. Trosclair and the Alligator has also received a Mom's Choice Award and was selected as a best book by the Bank Street College of Education and by the Children's Cooperative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most recent book is the middle-grade novel In the Company of Owls. In addition, he is the author of three books of poems, Necessary Acts, Blue Angels, and Hard Facts, and has published more than 300 poems in over 100 journals and magazines; in 2006 he received a literature fellowship in poetry from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. He teaches in the English Department at Auburn University.