Fiction / Poetry

Fiction

9:00AM – 9:50AM
How to Avoid Creating Cardboard Characters
Weldon Burge

Ever read stories in which the characters are two-dimensional, stereotypical, or even robotic? In this workshop, learn character development from a different perspective, using strategies that will help you create three-dimensional, realistic characters who will bring your stories to life and keep readers involved.

WELDON BURGE, a native of Delaware, is a writer and publisher. His short fiction has appeared in many publications, including various magazines and anthologies (such as Crimeucopia, The Best of the Horror Society, Pellucid Lunacy: An Anthology of Psychological Horror, Beach Pulp, and Scary Stuff, just to name a few). His stories have been adapted for podcast presentation by Drabblecast. Weldon was also a frequent writer for Suspense Magazine, often writing author interviews.

10:00AM – 10:50AM
Concision and Precision in Flash Fiction
Barbara Westwood Diehl

When writing flash fiction and other short forms, you want to deliver the maximum impact with the minimum number of words. Many editors are looking for short-form submissions that are fresh and engaging; surprising work that rises above the thousands of others in the submission queue. We'll review characteristics of flash and elements that make it memorable, respond to exercises that stimulate the imagination, practice writing in more concise and precise ways, and discuss revision and submission practices to improve acceptance rates.

BARBARA WESTWOOD DIEHL is senior editor of The Baltimore Review. Her fiction and poetry appear in a variety of journals, including Quiddity, Potomac Review (Best of the 50), SmokeLong Quarterly, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, Atticus Review, The MacGuffin, The Shore, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Raleigh Review, Ponder, Fractured Lit, South Florida Poetry Journal, Poetry South, Painted Bride Quarterly, Five South, Allium, Split Rock Review, Blink-Ink, and Free State Review.

11:00AM – 11:50AM
Turn Your Novel into a Movie!
Michele Chynoweth

Have you ever dreamed of making your book into a movie? Bestselling author Michele Chynoweth has too, and her dream is finally coming true as the movie based on her novel, The Jealous Son, is coming out in 2025. Michele will teach you how to write a book so that it's more adaptable to the screen and how to pitch your book to TV and movie producers...including writing a hands-on pitch sheet. The entertainment world is hungry for good stories to make into good movies and TV shows. Michele can lend her experience and knowledge to help you get on your way to seeing your work on screen!

MICHELE CHYNOWETH is the bestselling author of five award-winning contemporary suspense novels that re-imagine Old Testament stories from the Bible in an edgy, modern-day way. She loves helping writers become authors and is a sought-after conference speaker, professional editor, book coach and founder of  Your Book Done Right Master Class and Elite Coaching. A former news reporter, ad agency owner and marketing director, she lives with her husband in North East, Maryland.

1:30PM – 2:20PM
Beauty of Beats and Free Indirect Speech
Katie Chambers

The use of action beats and free indirect speech are two tools every writer should know. They help you with writing elements like showing, not telling; manipulating narrative distance; creating deeper interiority; enriching characterization; creating variety; playing with tension. In this presentation, you will learn what they are, when to use them, how to use them for the best effect, and the common mistakes to avoid with these tools.
     Plus, you will get: A PDF of the slides with examples; a handout with more examples; links to more resources on this topic; emailed personalized feedback from the presenter for any attendee who emails their in-presentation writing exercise

KATIE CHAMBERS, owner of Beacon Point LLC, is a nonfiction and fiction developmental editor and copy editor for independent authors, content writer and editor for business professionals, and online teacher. Having taught middle school and high school for eight years and trained in public speaking, she is passionate about teaching and helping others learn. So while she loves being an editor and running a business, she is grateful for opportunities to explore her other passions: speaking and teaching. Check out her resource center full of helpful resources for authors and her editing services to learn more.

2:30PM – 3:30PM
The Character Compass: Finding Narrative Direction Through Deep Characterization
Bridget Hodder & Laura Shovan

Many writers start their manuscripts on a roll, with a compelling hook, a gripping narrative framework, and interesting characters. But too often, our stories lose momentum causing the writers, themselves, to lose heart. Is there a way to help authors who are stuck, by jumpstarting narratives that have petered out? Yes! In this hands-on workshop led by two multi-published novelists, we'll explore the power of deep characterizations the unsung driver of story success. When characters come truly alive on the page, they can help direct the narrative rather than simply perform the plot, taking your story to new heights and new places, including such exciting destinations as "The End," and "Sold!"
      We invite you to bring a page of your own work that features your main character, as part of our collaborative process.

BRIDGET HODDER is the author of the middle-grade novel The Rat Prince, and co-author with Fawzia Gilani of The Button Box and The Promise. Her short story "The Thing About Stars" appears in the 2024 anthology, The Festival of Lights. Her upcoming novel, The Bluebeard, is a romantic gothic horror written for adults. Bridget's work has earned stars and recognition from Kirkus, the International Literacy Association, the Bank Street Best Books of the Year list, the Rhode Island Children's Book Awards, the CCBC, and the California Department of Education, among others. She enjoys speaking with audiences big and small, from elementary and middle schools, to the American Library Association, to universities such as Harvard and the University of Texas-Austin. To learn more, visit www.BridgetHodder.com 

LAURA SHOVAN is an author, educator, and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. Her chapbook, Mountain, Log, Salt, and Stone won the inaugural Harriss Poetry Prize. Her work appears in journals and anthologies for children and adults. Laura's award-winning middle grade novels include The Last Fifth Grade Class of Emerson Elementary, Takedown  and the Sydney Taylor Notable A Place at the Table, written with Saadia Faruqi. Laura is a longtime poet-in-the-schools for the Maryland State Arts Council. She serves on the faculty of Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her latest award-winning poetry collection for kids is Welcome to Monsterville.  Learn more at  www.laurashovan.com 

Poetry

9:00AM – 9:50AM
Fractures & Fragments: Layer, Distill, and Illuminate Your Poetry Using Everything You Were Taught Not To Do
Kari Ann Ebert

Poetry does not follow the rules of prose: every phrase does not need a subject and predicate. In fact, when a poem contains sentence fragments, it serves to make the poetic connection much stronger. In his Essay, "The Tradition of the Fragment" published in the Poetry Foundation blog, Kazim Ali says, "The use of the fragment in poetry will offer the poet a way to return to silence, return to pre-ubiquity, a chance to invite the unknown and return to the unknowable original sources of poetry in the body and world."

KARI ANN EBERT is an award winning poet & writer whose work has appeared in literary journals such as The Night Heron Barks, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, and The Ekphrastic Review among others. She was awarded the 2020 Individual Artist Fellowship in Poetry from Delaware Division of the Arts and serves on the board of The Dover Art League. When she is not writing, Kari can be found in a hot yoga class, at the roller rink, or creating collages and zines.

10:00AM – 10:50AM
Writing the Sonnet: Poetry's Strict Mistress
Nancy Mitchell

"Poverty, like a sonnet is a good teacher." —Diane Seuss

In my decades as a college professor in all levels of Poetry Workshops, writing sonnets has been the form which my students most resisted on the grounds that it would stifle their creativity.  However, after a semester of writing sonnets, every student agreed that it had been the most rigorous, significant and productive semester in the Creative Writing program. No longer could they dash off poems a few days before workshops; to make a sonnet would require they start at least a week before, weighing the value of every word, image, and sound for the most economical impact within the metric restraints of the form. They found that the distractions of meeting the precise requirements of the form helped them to access intuitions and discover connections within the framework they would have never consciously considered. The sonnet provided a sealed alchemical vessel in which a compressed, limited number of words produced a chain of reactions that free verse could not. The results of the semester were a portfolio of dynamic poems which earned many of them admittance into graduate school.
     The writing of sonnets also connects the writer to the long history of practitioners from the past and encourages a sense of generational kinship within the tradition and community of poets. It’s no wonder the form and it’s many variations have endured, and continues to be an exacting, rigorous and rewarding practice.

NANCY MITCHELL is a 2012 Pushcart Prize winner, the author of The Near Surround, Grief Hut, and The Out-of-Body Shop, and co-editor of Plume Interviews I. Her poems have appeared in such journals as Agni, Green Mountains Review, Ploughshares, and Washington Square Review. She serves as Editor of Special Features for Plume Poetry and is the inaugural Poet Laureate of the City of Salisbury Maryland. She hosts the Poets’ Corner Reading Series at City Headquarters in Salisbury, Maryland.

bio to come

11:00AM – 11:50AM
Hello & Goodbye: Aubade, Praise, Elegy
Courtney Bambrick

The aubade, ode, praise poem, and elegy are styles of poems that closely consider our day to day relationships and interactions. These are poems for observing, celebrating, and remembering. Using simple generative writing exercises, we will develop some new, accessible approaches to these poems and weave poetry into everyday experiences. Whether we are remembering a departed family member, admiring a famous athlete, or reflecting on the morning's charged exchange with a barista, we can find poems in the smallest and most significant moments of our lives.

COURTNEY BAMBRICK was poetry editor at Philadelphia Stories 2010-2024. She teaches writing at Thomas Jefferson University's East Falls campus in Philadelphia. Her own poems appear in Landlocked Magazine, Pinhole Poetry, Thimble, SWWIM Everyday, New York Quarterly, Invisible City, and more.

1:30PM – 2:20PM
All Over the Floor:  Poems and the Quotidian Immanent
Catherine Carter

The title of this session comes from a gospel spiritual recorded in 1929 by Blind Willie Johnson, God Don't Never Change, which refers to God in every corner, and God all over the floor. Lest attendees be nonplussed by the use of the G-word, this is not a workshop geared to any particular religion, or even to people who identify as "religious". Rather, it's about how poets can stare into the most everyday things, experiences, and moments to recognize the glimmer and resonance of whatever's greater than our conscious human selves. By what means can poems situate a sense of the spirit and/or the divine in every corner and all over the floor, instead of up in some faraway heaven?  We'll look at a few examples, consider what techniques and approaches they have in common, and try to write something of this nature ourselves.  Handouts will be provided. 

CATHERINE CARTER's poetry collections with LSU Press include Larvae of the Nearest Stars, The Swamp Monster at Home, and The Memory of Gills, with a fourth, By Stone and Needle, forthcoming in fall 2025; she is also a co-translator and co-editor of the first complete modern English verse translation of John Gower's 33,000-line Middle English poem, The Lover's Confession. Her work has also appeared in Best American Poetry, Orion, Poetry, Ploughshares, RHINO, and Ecotone, among others, and she lives with her spouse in Cullowhee, NC, where she is a professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University.

2:30PM – 3:30PM
The Skinny Poetry Workshop Redux: Line/Breaks/Love
Truth Thomas

In this face-to-face poetry workshop with the Skinny form creator, NAACP Image Award-winning poet Truth Thomas, Howard County, Maryland's Inaugural Poet Laureate, will teach the formal writing rules of this acclaimed, internationally popular form focusing exclusively on themes of ferocious love. Workshop participants will learn the poetic, redemptive, and keenly powerful nature of the love poem focus specifically in the context of this fixed form of poetry. As always, writing life lessons on the importance of concision in the practice of poetry will be celebrated. This will be a writing-intensive, singular, and hopefully transformative literary event.

TRUTH THOMAS, born in Knoxville and raised in Washington, DC, is a widely published poet, singer-songwriter, and photographer (the Capitol recording artist once known as Glenn Edward Thomas). An MFA graduate in poetry from New England College, he studied creative writing at Howard University under Dr. Tony Medina. Thomas has authored five poetry collections, including Speak Water, which won the 2013 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry. Founder of Cherry Castle Publishing, he created the acclaimed Skinny poetry form, serves as Editor-in-Chief of The Skinny Poetry Journal, and is Howard County, Maryland's Inaugural Poet Laureate.

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