Sacramento State Summer Writers' Conference

 

Overview

 

Share an intensive weekend of inspiring lectures, hands-on workshops and networking opportunities with writers and publishing insiders at Sacramento State this summer. Take your writing to the next level, explore new genres, and learn how to publish your work while forging relationships that will help to challenge and sustain you throughout the year.

 

Keynote Speaker

 

Dinah LenneyDinah Lenney
Dinah Lenney, aka Nurse Shirley on NBC’s ER, is the author of Bigger than Life: A Murder, a Memoir from the University of Nebraska’s American Lives Series. She teaches writing at UCLA, USC and Bennington, holds a BA from Yale, as well as an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

 

Memoir as Performance: The Power of Voice 
A conductor once said that the difference between classical and jazz is that in the former the music is always greater than the performance. As it is with jazz, so it is with the theatre: it helps an actor to have good words to play, but if the material can elevate the player, so can the performance elevate the material. As with theatre and jazz, first person narrative depends on performance -- what's compelling about the best nonfiction is as much "the who" as "the what", as in who's telling the story and why. I'll offer an examination (a defense?) of memoir that leans on this idea of performance as requisite to a good read, and reason enough to tell the story.

 

 

Features

 

  • Keynote presentation by Dinah Lenney
  • Professional-level writing instruction from nationally renowned authors
  • Writing workshops on biography, broadcast, children’s literature, fiction, mystery, play writing, poetry, screen writing, and blogging
  • Opportunities for individual critique from workshop leaders
  • Evening reading event, open to the pubic
  • Lunch break with Sacramento area writers’ groups

 

Audience

 

This conference is designed for aspiring memoir writers, children's literature, critics, novelists, playwrights, poets and anyone with a passion for the written word.

 

Benefits

 

  • Polish your writing talent
  • Broaden your skills by trying new genres
  • Receive feedback on your work from published authors and peers
  • Gain confidence in your abilities
  • Learn how to publish written work from industry insiders
  • Establish or join ongoing writing circles