About 400 Valley high school students and their teachers are expected to attend the 2008 Young Writers’ Conference at California State University, Fresno on Wednesday, March 26. The program from 9:15 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Satellite Student Union is sponsored by the English Department and Masters of Fine Arts Program.
Acclaimed novelist Mona Simpson will be the keynote speaker. Simpson, who teaches creative writing at UCL, is the author of “Anywhere But Here,” a bestseller adapted into film. She also wrote “The Lost Father,” “A Regular Guy” and “Off Keck Road,” which was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award.
She was named one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists and has won several prestigious awards, including the Whiting Writer’s Award, a Guggenheim grant, the Hodder Fellowship and a grant from the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation.
During the conference, cash prizes will be awarded to 19 individual student writers and two high school teachers for excellence in teaching creative writing.
The 2008 issue of Spectrum, an annual anthology of poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction submitted in advance by participants, will be distributed at the conference. Following the presentation of awards and keynote address by Simpson, workshops on writing techniques in the various genres will be offered to students by graduate students in the MFA Program and to teachers by Simpson.
“The conference allows students to meet and interact with other student writers from across the Valley, to get a taste of what a university-level writing workshop might be like and to get expert feedback on their own writing,” said coordinator Tanya Nichols, a Fresno State English instructor. “It is also an excellent opportunity for idea exchange among the teachers who come and participate.”
The morning session with Simpson and awards presentation is free and open to the public.
For more information on the Young Writers’ Conference, contact Tanya Nichols at 559.278.2467 or Tanichols@csufresno.edu.
