About 300 high school students and their teachers from nearly 20 schools in Fresno, Clovis, Madera, Chowchilla, Merced, King City, Lemoore, Selma, Tulare and Porterville are expected to attend the 2012 Young Writers’ Conference on Wednesday, March 28, at Fresno State.
The 32nd annual conference is scheduled 8:30 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Satellite Student Union.
Acclaimed poet and novelist Liza Wieland, who lives in Arapahoe, N.C., will be the keynote speaker at 9:45 a.m. She has published the novels “The Names of the Lost” and “Bombshell” and two collections of short fiction, as well as a volume of poems, “Near Alcatraz.”
Her work has also been awarded two Pushcart Prizes and she has earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation and the North Carolina Arts Council.
Cash prizes will be awarded to 18 students for excellence in creative writing, including the prestigious President’s Award. Two high school teachers will receive awards for excellence in teaching. The awards presentation, which begins at 9:15, and Wieland’s address are free and open to the community.
Award sponsors include the William Saroyan Society, Fresno State College of Arts and Humanities, San Joaquin Literary Association, Fresno Area Council of English Teachers, Henry Madden Library, San Joaquin Valley Writing Project, Chicano Writers and Artists Association and Hmong American Writers’ Circle.
The anthology “Spectrum” is distributed at the conference, showcasing 40 of the best student entries in poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction as reviewed by Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing student editorial board from among nearly 350 submissions.
Following the presentation of the awards and keynote address, writing workshops in various genres will be offered to the high school students by MFA graduate students and to the teachers by Wieland.
“The conference allows students to meet and interact with other student writers from across the region, to get a taste of what a university-level writing workshop is like and to get expert feedback on their own writing,” said conference coordinator Tanya Nichols, a Fresno State English instructor. “It is also an excellent opportunity for idea exchange among the teachers.”
The annual Young Writers’ Conference is one of the few writing conferences in the nation aimed towards teens.
The conference is sponsored by the College of Arts and Humanities, English Department, and MFA Program at Fresno State.
For more information on the conference, contact Nichols at (559) 278.2467 or tanichols@csufresno.edu.
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