Fiction / Poetry

Fiction

9:00AM-9:50AM
Conflict and Suspense in Fiction
Austin Camacho

These are two elements we have to lean hard on to create good fiction. Without conflict, there is no story—conflict is what drives your story forward. And without suspense, readers have no reason to get to the end of your story—suspense is what draws your readers through the story to a satisfying conclusion. In this session, I will show you how to use several kinds of conflict in your stories, and how to use suspense to keep your reader involved in your stories all the way to the last page.

AUSTINDS.DCAMACHO is the author of eight novels about Washington DC-based private eye Hannibal Jones, five in the Stark and O’Brien international thriller series, and the detective novel, Beyond Blue. His short stories have been featured in several anthologies. He is featured in the Edgar nominated African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey. He's one of the creators of the Creatures, Crimes & Creativity Literary Conference.

10:00AM – 10:50AM
Create Your Character's Arc
Susan Reiss

In fiction, characters need to change. You need to create the CHARACTER ARC. It is in the dreaded middle of the arc where many stories grow weak, even flounder. A strategy using ENNEAGRAMS can guide you, offer ideas, even a better understanding of a character. It's not a formula. It's not a template. You decide from the possibilities the Enneagrams present. In this interactive session, working together, we will apply this strategy to create a protagonist and antagonist.

SUSAN REISS Winner of the BookFest Gold Medal for Best Fiction Series, her In Time series of seven novels combines mystery and historical fiction with a dash of romance set in Talbot County. Several made the Amazon's Top 100 Bestsellers in Historical Fiction. She was named a Scribe of the Eastern Shore. Before writing books, she was a television writer/producer in Washington. Her work won NY International Film Festival Silver Medal, CINE Golden Eagle & Telly Awards.

11:00AM – 11:50AM
The Power and Potential of Writing Small Town and Rural LGBTQ+ Romance
TJ West

When it comes to writing LGBTQ+ romance, small towns and rural areas are often left out of the picture, and there is an unspoken assumption that these places aren't conducive to queer love stories and in fact may be actively hostile to them. However, this belief leaves out the many queer folks who inhabit and thrive in such places, including Appalachia and here on Delmarva itself. In this workshop, we'll examine how drawing on the experiences, lives, and traditions of small town and rural LGBTQ+ people can enrich and deepen the romance genre and how this approach can also add emotional nuance and emotional complexity to the love stories that we choose to tell.

TJ WEST The proud son and grandson of farmers and coal miners, TJ West is a queer writer and culture critic. He holds a Bachelor's degree from Marshall University and a Master's and Doctorate from Syracuse University. Though he is based on Maryland's Eastern Shore (where he lives with his partner and their cat) the Mountain State will always have a piece of his heart.

3:00PM – 3:50PM
The Novella: A "Novel" Approach of Point of View
Pat Valdata

Like many fiction writers, I struggle with point of view when writing a novel. It's especially hard when I want my readers to get inside the mind of more than one character. How do I manage that without confusing the reader, muddying the story, and making long-form fiction even harder to write than it already is? This craft talk will explore how the use of linked novellas for a novel-within-a-novel approach is a practical way to handle the point of view of multiple characters.

PATDVALDATA is a fiction writer and poet. Her newest novel, Everyday Courage, is forthcoming from Wind Canyon Books. Her other novels are Eve's Daughters, a feminist retelling of the Adam and Eve story; The Other Sister, a family saga about Hungarian immigrants; and Crosswind, a coming-of-age story about women glider pilots. Her poetry book Where No Man Can Touch won the Donald Justice Prize in 2015; a revised edition was published in 2023.

4:00PM – 4:50PM
Stage Directions or Story Work? Making Your Scenes Count
Kris Faatz

Scenes, in which readers get to see what characters do and hear what characters say, give writers a huge opportunity to do two things: move their storylines along and show who their characters are. But what if we're not sure what our characters should say or do? "Bill walked across the room" so what? In this session, we'll dig into the idea of "story work," and look at how action and dialogue can bring both characters and narrative to life. We'll look at examples of how to do this, and practice writing mini-scenes which we'll share and discuss, to see what our chosen details can reveal to a reader. Writers will come out of the session with new insights to apply in their own projects.

KRISDFAATZ (rhymes with skates) is a pianist and award-winning writer. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Bright Flash Literary Review, South 85, and Bewildering Stories. Her third novel, Line Magic, was shortlisted for the Santa Fe Writers Project's 2023 literary awards and released in 2025 by Highlander Press (Baltimore). Kris and her husband serve as staff to three cats and enjoy hiking and outdoor exploration.

Poetry

9:00AM – 9:50AM
Location, Location, Location
Deidra Greenleaf Allan & Meredith Davies Hadaway

How do we evoke the power of place to explore the connection between the inner and outer landscapes that create our world? We’ll look at 10 tips for maximizing the experience and character of a place as well as a generative writing exercise to help poets and writers in all genres "locate" their work.

DEIDRADGREENLEAFDALLAN has been published in American Poetry Review, Quartet Journal, Puerto del Sol, Poet Lore, Plume, and West Branch, among other print and online journals. In 2001 she was selected by Robert Hass as Montgomery County (PA) Poet Laureate. She has received a Leeway Emerging Artist Award and was a finalist for a Pew Fellowship in poetry. Her poem, "Apostrophe to the Living," was selected in 2012 by Musehouse as its Poem of Hope poster. In 2025, she served as poetry editor for the Spy family of community newspapers, introducing readers to the diverse voices in contemporary poetry. Allan holds an MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her chapbook, Each the Other's Echo, will be published in early 2026 by Seven Kitchens Press.

MEREDITHDDAVIESDHADAWAY is the author of five books of poetry including Small Craft Warning, a collaboration with artist Marcy Dunn Ramsey and [Among the Many Disappearing Things], issued in 2024. Her poems have appeared in failbetter, The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Nimrod International among other journals. She served as poetry editor for The Summerset Review for ten years. She has received Maryland Individual Artist awards and Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellowships as well as multiple Pushcart nominations. Hadaway has been a featured writer for the Delmarva Review and her work is in the recent Best of Delmarva Review anthology. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Hadaway is currently the Sophie Kerr Poet-in-Residence at Washington College where she teaches ecopoetry.

10:00AM – 10:50AM
Not in Ideas, but in Things: Tethering the Abstract to the Concrete in Poetry
Nancy Mitchell

"Not In Ideas, But in Things" was the mantra of the American Imagist poet William Carlos Williams, who, among other Imagist poets, believed deep emotion is best articulated by concrete, vivid, and tangible imagery rather than in abstract ideas, declarations, and generalizations. By photographic "framing" of ordinary objects in everyday settings and using precise, unadorned language, these Imagists created rich layers of emotions without explicitly stating them. We'll look at some imagistic poems, then write our own based on a selected photo collection.

NANCYDMITCHELL, recipient of a Pushcart Prize, is the author of The Near Surround, Grief Hut, and The Out-of-Body Shop. Her poems have or will appear in journals such as Agni, Green Mountains Review, Ploughshares, and Washington Square Review. Associate Editor for Plume Poetry, she serves as Salisbury, Maryland's Poet Laureate.

11:00AM – 11:50AM
Not Islands: Poetry as Remedy for Isolation
Traci Currie, Kim Roberts, & Dan Vera

Many poets come to writing through an early, formative experience that made them feel "othered." These early experiences can turn into a lifelong search for safe spaces. The panel will discuss their paths of transforming early isolation into a need to build community: specifically how we use craft to re-frame personal experience into poems, and how that process also informs our community-building skills toward creating reading series, editing journals, teaching in community, and doing outreach. As we begin writing out of the rawness of visceral emotions, vulnerability becomes a doorway to reach out to others. We belong to poetry, and poetry belongs to us. The three panelists—Caribbean-American, Jewish, Cuban-American, and LGBTQ+--come from different cultural traditions, but have found strength in mutual community. 

This panel focuses on how good literary citizenship is a healing journey. We will discuss how our "otherness" was transformed within the poetry community from difference to diversity, from vulnerability to strength. Each panelist will address how early experiences shaped them as poets and organizers. Each will give examples of some of the projects that they have developed that have been most meaningful to them in creating the community that did not otherwise exist. 

TRACIDCURRIE is a spoken word artist, university professor, teaching artist, multi-disciplinary facilitator, youth arts program director, and mixed media artist-activist. This Jamaican American poet is a 2022 Anaphora Writing Fellow, 2024 University of Delaware Poetry As Activism Poet-in-Residence, currently the state coordinator for Poetry Out Loud in the state of Delaware, and an Assistant Professor at Goldey-Beacom College.

KIMDROBERTS is the author of 7 books of poems, and editor of two anthologies and two walking tour guidebooks of Washington, DC. Roberts curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June, and co-directs the Pride Poets-in-Residence fellowship program at the Arts Club of Washington.

Message in a Bottle: Writing the Short Personal Lyric Secular Prayer, Elegy, Recipe for Life, Ars Poetica
Donna Hilbert

Edward Hirsch says "The message in the bottle is a lyric poem and thus a special kind of communiqué. It speaks out of a solitude to a solitude; it begins and ends in silence." Gregory Orr speaks of the lyric poem: "It constellates around a single center-usually an emotional center such as a single dominant feeling, though it could also be a dominant image, action, or situation. . ." We will explore the great flexibility of the lyric and look at exemplary poems from masters of the lyric, including Lucille Clifton, Andrea Cohen, Adam Zagajewski, Kay Ryan, Robert Frost, Diane di Prima, Ross Gay, and Erin Murphy. This will be a pen and paper event, so get ready to write!

DONNADHILBERT's latest book is Enormous Blue Umbrella, Moon Tide Press, 2025. Work has appeared in journals and broadcasts including Eclectica, Gyroscope, Rattle, Sheila Na Gig, ONE ART, Verse Daily, Vox Populi, The Writer's Almanac, anthologies including Boomer Girls, The Widows' Handbook, The Poetry of Presence I & II, The Path to Kindness, The Wonder of Small Things, Love is For All of Us. She writes and leads workshops from her home base in Long Beach, California.

4:00PM – 4:50PM
Honoring Your Literary Lineage: From Beloved Works to New Poems
Lesley Younge

Our poetic inspirations are a kind of chosen family. In this workshop, we will explore the ways we can ethically be inspired by and pay homage to the writers we align with, the ones who form our "literary lineage." Choosing from both existing prose and poetry, participants will generate new work. We will explore strategies and forms including allusions, found verse, ekphrastics, Centos and Golden Shovels.

LESLEYDYOUNGE is a writer and middle school educator living in Silver Spring, Maryland. Her work has been supported by Poetry, Midnight & Indigo, West Trade Review, Full Bleed, VCCA, and others. She is also the author of two books for young people: Nearer My Freedom, an award winning verse novel remix of Olaudah Equiano's autobiography, and A-Train Allen, her first picture book. Visit teacherlesley.com for more information and resources on writing and teaching.

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