This SLO writers conference is going virtual for first time in 36 years
For the first time in more than three decades, the Central Coast Writers Conference will be held online.
The three-day event, being held virtually via the video conferencing app Zoom due to the coronavirus pandemic, will include 12 presenters of color and a new Voices of Color scholarship.
The conference will be held Sept. 24 through 26 and is hosted by Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo .
This year’s Central Coast Writers Conference will spotlight a “diverse and richly talented group of presenters of color,” according to a news release.
“We want to make it easier for the underrepresented to be heard, to write and to hone in on their story,” CCWC director Teri Bayus said. “Writers of color share wonderful and important literary work with the world, and it’s now more important than ever to celebrate and encourage that.”
The event was named the “Best Conference in the West” by The Writer magazine.
Registration costs is $225 and includes workshops in “small, intimate” settings along with discussions with professional writers.
Organizers will make scholarships available to people of color as well as “essential workers, teens, teachers, LGBTQ community members, cancer patients, or anyone brave enough to come just to be in the conference,” Bayus said.
Presentations at the conference, which covers novels, poetry, screenwriting and business writing, include “Surviving and Thriving in the Book World,” “Freelance Writing: Get Paid to Write for Magazines,” and “And then ... Navigating the World of Professional Screenwriting.”
More than 40 presenters and 100 workshops will share skills and experiences, including novelist Bryan Young, screenwriter Linda Aronson and business writer Felicia Slattery.
“Every year, there is a beginning writers’ track and then there’s a track for publication, including marketing, publishing, editors and a lot now has to do with adaption of a book to screenplay, or a play or a speaking engagement,” Bayus said.
Bayus said that some of the writers who came to the conference in past years to learn the craft have since sold their work, achieving financial success.
Presenters of color include:
▪ Kerra Bolton, a filmmaker whose documentary “Return of the Black Madonna” follows Bolton’s quest to learn to swim, dive and map sunken slave ships between Africa and the Americas;
▪ Fauzia S. Burke, of San Diego, author of “Online Marketing for Busy Authors,” and the founder and president of online book publicity firm FSB Associates;
▪ Lynne Thompson of Los Angeles, author of three chapbooks and the print collections “Start With a Small Guitar” and “Beg No Pardon”; and
▪ Gary Phillips of Los Angeles, a novelist, short story writer and editor of several anthologies, including “The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir.”
Past conferences have attracted about 500 attendees.
For more information, including inquires on scholarships, email centralcoastwritersconference@gmail.com or go to http://www.centralcoastwritersconference.com.
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