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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--Speakers'
Bureau: Are you looking for a speaker
for your club, community group, or school program? Search the list of 16 speakers
or select a particular category such as Poetry, Nonfiction,
Songwriting, Publishing, Grammar for Grownups, or Regional Writing
and choose a writer with expertise in that category. Speakers selected to
represent the Knoxville Writers Guild are not
paid by the Guild, but have agreed to donate 10% of all honoraria, compensation
and book sales to
the KWG.
Click here for more information...
Note: The Peter Taylor Prize competition is on a one-year hiatus. Please check back in January of 2009 for details about our next competition, and watch for our latest prize-winning book, to be released in the fall of 2008. John McLaughlin's winning novel Run in the Fam'ly wins again: Texas Institute of Letters, for Best First Novel, and Best Novel overall of 2007.
--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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