Chattanooga Festival of Writers

I attended my first writer's conference this past weekend. It was a great conference and I walked away having learned a lot more than I expected.

The main portion of the conference consisted on four session times with three discussions to choose from during each session. I attended "The Memoir:Telling Your Story" (John Sedgwick), "Writing the Short Story" (Ben Fountain), "Freelance Journalism: crafting a Career, Finding Your Niche" (Nancy Henderson, Sean Price, Nancy Hatch Woodward), and "Tips to Keep the Reader Reading" (Will Akers)

As you can see I chose to attend talks that covered just about everything you could write. And there were other sessions that I wish I could have fit in but with seven sessions choices and only four time blocks, I couldn't do it all.

The festival itself started Friday night with a reception dinner and keynote address by Ben Fountain. Saturday was the main day with breakfast, two sessions, lunch with keynote address by Allen Wier, the final two sessions and a book signing. I avoided the signing as my budget is limited at the moment and all the authors have so many good titles to choose from. I was sure I would be tempted to purchase one of everything, so I stayed away.

As far as gems of knowledge I pulled from the sessions I attended, I'll post those tomorrow.

Links to some of the authors:
www.willakers.com
www.nancyhendersonwrst.com
www.johnsedgwich.com
www.allenwier.com
www.lollywinston.com
www.nancyhatchwoodward.com
www.katorihall.com
http://english.unc.edu/faculty/kenan.html