Upcoming Opportunities


7th Annual Taos Writers Conference
Friday, July 7 to
Sunday, July 9, 2023
at SOMOS, Taos, New Mexico
Limited-seating live sessions as well as online via Zoom.
A full weekend of workshops on fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, poetry, short stories and more!
Early-bird registration by 6/23/23.
Confirmed Faculty include:
Keynote Speaker/Instructor
Tommy Orange
Aaron Abeyta
EJ Levy
Linda Michel-Cassidy
Amy Beeder
Sawnie Morris
Brenda Beardsley
Minrose Gwin
Sharon Oard Warner
Lauren Camp
Ariel Gore
Jamie Figueroa
Susan Mihalic
Allegra Huston
Connie Josefs
Veronica Golos
Sean Murphy
Valeria Martinez
Leanna Torres
Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Session: Why Make a Scene?
Presenter: Sharon Oard Warner
Session, Sunday, July 16 to Friday, July 21; all day
Later, we’ll sort out the specifics. For now, let’s say the novella is an extended work of fiction: long enough for the reader to get lost in but short enough to be consumed in a single sitting. It doesn’t take up much space. Stow it in your purse or slip it in your back pocket. Read it as you wait in line for coffee. Novellas used to be considered awkward—too long to fit comfortably in the pages of most literary magazines and too short to be published alone. But, in our current culture, the novella is, as Debra Sparks has said, “Goldilocks form, not too much this and not too much that but just right.” read more
Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Session: The Novella Workshop
Presenter: Sharon Oard Warner
Weekend Session, July 22 to 23; all day
Creating a public display of emotion is one way to describe “making a scene.” We’ve all been there, usually as onlookers, occasionally as participants. Most often, public spectacles are spontaneous, but scenes on paper are anything but. Particularly in the early stages of the writing process, scenes require considerable planning and forethought. In The Scene Book: A Primer for the Fiction Writer, author Sandra Scofield defines scenes as “those passages in narrative when we slow down and focus on an event in the story so that we are ‘in the moment’ with characters in action.” If the scene is compelling enough, the reader becomes a bystander of sorts, and characters come to life. Anyone who writes short stories, novellas, novels, memoirs, screenplays or dramatic plays must be proficient at creating compelling scenes. Think about it: All the significant moments in any narrative get conveyed through scene. Scenes are the building blocks of narrative, regardless of the form that narrative takes. read more

Iowa Summer Writing Festival
Friday, July 7 to
Friday, July 28, 2023
Magid Center for Writing
24 Phillips Hall
Iowa City, Iowa 52242
