Summer Guild Workshops:
July 6-9 and July 13-16. Browse the courses for you! Click here.

Block off the two weeks of July 6-16 to attend the Guild's 2009 summer workshops. Find out more about writing fiction, starting your own publishing business, travel photography, CSI and medical drama for writers plus how to write poetry and memoirs...and MORE!

Presenters will include: Cyn Mobley, Bryce Anderson, Joanna Francis, Don Williams, Alex Gabbard, Katie Chambers, KB Ballentine, Linda Parsons Marion, and Scott Savage. All workshops will be held at Pellissippi State Technical Community College, Hardin Valley campus.

Fees will range from $20 and up for members and $28 and up for nonmembers. You can pay online by credit card or PayPal.

or send your check or money order to
Knoxville Writers' Guild
P.O. Box 10326
Knoxville TN 37939

Browse the schedule. Click here.

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The Knoxville Writers' Guild Poetry Group is delighted to announce their first chapbook Bleeding Hearts published by Iris Press due out sometime this summer 2009. Editors, Cathy Kodra, Scott Savage, and Cat d'Arcy. More details will follow.

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Maureen Egan Writers Exchange Award

Fiction writerand Guild member Jeanne McDonald and poet Blas Falconer, both of Tennessee, are the recipients of the 2009 Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. Falconer and McDonald will each receive an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City in October to meet with agents, editors, publishers, and other members of the New York literary community. Judges for this year's prize were fiction writer Paula Morris and poet Natasha Trethewey.

Jeanne McDonald is the author of a novel, Water Dreams (University Press of Mississippi, 2003), and two nonfiction books with co-author and husband, Fred Brown: Growing Up Southern: How the South Shapes Its Writers (Blue Ridge Publishing, 1998) and The Serpent Handlers (John F. Blair Press, Winston-Salem, 2000). She has published numerous short stories in journals, anthologies, and magazines and is a freelance writer for Knoxville Magazine. She was the recipient of a $5,000 state fellowship for fiction and many other awards and prizes. She lives in Knoxville.

Blas Falconer is the author of A Question of Gravity and Light (University of Arizona Press, 1997). His work has appeared in the Indiana Review and Lyric, among other literary magazines, and last year he was awarded Tennessee's Individual Artist Grant for poetry. He is an editor for Zone 3: A Literary Journal, as well as the co-editor of two anthologies: Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets, forthcoming from SIU Press in 2010, and a collection of essays on contemporary Latino poetry, forthcoming from University of Arizona Press in 2011. He teaches at Austin Peay State University and lives in Nashville, where he is working on a second full-length collection of poems, The Foundling Wheel.

To date, 78 writers from 31 states have participated in P&W's Writers Exchange. As a direct result of the Writers Exchange, past winners notably Sue Monk Kidd, author of The Secret Lives of Bees- have had their books published, received awards and fellowships, secured teaching positions, and laid the groundwork for their professional lives as writers.

The Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award introduces emerging writers to the New York City literary community. Each year, poets and fiction writers from one state, who have never published a book or no more than one book, are invited to apply for the award. Winners are selected by outside judges based on manuscripts they submit to P&W, and receive an all-expenses-paid, weeklong trip to New York City. During their visit they meet with literary agents, editors, publishers, and writers, and give a public reading. Begun in 1984, 78 writers from 31 states have received this award to date. Many of its recipients have gone on to receive other awards, secure teaching positions, and get their books published.

Title of the award has been given to Maureen Egen-a gift in her honor was given to Poets & Writers by Hachette Book Group USA in 2007.

(Top: Blas Falconer, photo by Susan Tomi Cheek, Bottom: Jeanne McDonald, photo by Shannon Stanfield)

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Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers

The Knoxville Writers’ Guild released its 2008 literary anthology, Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers, recently.

Buy your copy now! Cost is $12 for Guild members, and $15 for nonmembers. All proceeds benefit the programs of the Knoxville Writers’ Guild. You can purchase your copy at local bookstores including Carpe Librum and on the KWG website. Click here.

A collection of 101 writers contributed to the book, including Deedee Agee, daughter of famed novelist James Agee, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Charles Wright, Michael Knight, director of creative writing at the University of Tennessee, poet Marilyn Kallet, and poet, songwriter and recording artist RB Morris. Others include people who are publishing for the first time.

Pieces in the book include short stories, essays, poetry, humor and artwork. They range from Judy Pinkston McCarthy’s essay that pays homage to the Dixie-Lee Highway, to Robert “Bob” Boyd’s poignant childhood memory of being taken from a loving aunt and uncle to live with his mother and stepfather, to Deedee Agee’s short story about a young mother’s coming to terms with reality through a series of washing machines, to Jack Neely’s essay on the meaning of the term, “Appalachia.” Editors: Jessie Janeshek and Jesse Graves.

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--Career Achievement Awards and Guild Contest winners:

2002: Carson Brewer
2003: George Scarbrough
2004: Wilma Dykeman
2005: Jon Manchip White
2006: Jeff Daniel Marion
2008: David Hunter

--Members Write and Shine! News of activities, awards, honors, and kudos!

--Writers in the University of Tennessee Library schedule.

Listen to an audio file from the July 2007 Open Mic program. Thanks to Gene Brennan for his efforts to deliver and to Guild members reading from their own writings! Right-click here to download to your desktop.

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