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Early Bird Registration Rates (through 9/14): $49

Last Minutes Registration Rates (9/15-9/21): $69

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Tickets are limited, so make sure to register early! 

Even if you can’t attend the whole event, recordings of all sessions will be made available to registered attendees after the event.

REGISTRATION FORM IS AT BOTTOM OF THE PAGE

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Conference Schedule & Session Details

Note: All times are listed in the Central Time Zone (CT).

8:45am-9:00am: Welcome & Opening Remarks

9:00am-10:00am: Writing from the Heart: Where Grief Becomes Art with Melanie Brooks and Eileen Vorbach Collins – Moderated by Lisa Cooper Ellison

Grief, though universal, makes people uncomfortable, especially when complicated by circumstances associated with shame or stigma. Two memoirists who have written grief-themed work will discuss how giving words to the hard stories—one about suicide loss, the other about HIV/AIDS—allowed them to remap the intimate losses they both faced, come to terms with the experiences, and share them with others in meaningful ways that have healing possibilities for both writer and reader. Lisa Cooper Ellison, author and trauma-informed writing coach will moderate the discussion.

Melanie Brooks is a writer and college professor living in New Hampshire. She is the author of: Writing Hard Stories:Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press 2017) and A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family grief and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press 2023). She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She teaches narrative medicine in Bay Path University’s MFA program. She has taught workshops on writing memoir, specifically about trauma and grief. She’s spoken widely at national and regional conferences on the healing possibilities of writing hard stories. Her essays ranging on topics of grief, illness, mental health, parenting, and aging have been widely published. Learn more about Melanie’s work and publications at melaniebrooks.com.

Eileen Vorbach Collins, a Baltimore native, worked as an RN for thirty years and came late to the writing life. She began writing after her fifteen-year-old daughter died by suicide. While getting a master’s degree in spiritual and pastoral care, most of Eileen’s written assignments focused on grief. Her thesis explored how community and support groups impact the bereaved and the idea of maintaining ties with the deceased. Her essays have been widely published, received several literary awards, and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her essay collection, Love in the Archives, a Patchwork of True Stories About Suicide Loss, received a Pencraft Best Book Award in 2024, was a 2023 Forward Indies Finalist and received the 2023 Story Circle Network’s Sarton Women’s Book Award for memoir. Learn more about Eileen and her publications at loveinthearchives.com.

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 10:10am-11:10am: Turning Points & Stepping Stones: Capturing the Pivotal Moments in Your Life with Brenda Hudson

This experiential workshop uses journaling techniques and facilitated writing exercises to help participants uncover and explore the pivotal moments in their lives. We will examine not only what has happened in their lives but also the themes and meaning arising from these transformative experiences. Participants will have fun with structure, shaping one of their pivotal moments into a flash piece.

Brenda Hudson is passionate about helping others voice their lives through writing, leading workshops where participants discover and capture their life stories using journaling techniques. Brenda has an MS in journalism from Boston University and a PhD from the University of Minnesota’s Department of Writing Studies and is a credentialed journal facilitator through the Therapeutic Writing Institute. Her how-to book Story by Story: 15 Projects to Write Your Family Legacy is based on her legacy writing and memoir workshops. She regularly teaches at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where she has received its Excellence in Teaching Fellowship multiple times. She is also the Loft’s resident “Muse,” providing weekly writing prompts and facilitating live writing sessions as part of their new online community Lit!Commons. Brenda loves leading workshops at libraries, historical societies, schools, and youth summer camps and is the founder of VoicedLife. 

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11:20am-12:20pm: Crafting Dialogue that Speaks for Itself  with Peggy Joque Williams

This workshop will cover actionable strategies for revising and sharpening dialogue, reducing unneeded verbiage, and creating subtext. Participants will learn the difference between the way people talk in real life versus dialogue that “sounds” real, and how to craft dialogue that engages the reader, adds tension, offers backstory efficiently, and deepens character. Examples from published works of fiction will illustrate effective dialogue techniques with opportunities to ask questions.

Peggy Joque Williams’ historical fiction, Courting the Sun: a Novel of Versailles, was released in May 2024 by Black Rose Writing. She has also co-authored and independently published two award-winning mystery novels, On the Road to Death’s Door and On the Road to Where the Bells Toll, as well as several award-winning and optioned screenplays. Her co-written short film, The Stone Carver, made its debut at the Door County (Wisconsin) Film Festival in February 2024. She earned her bachelor’s degree in education at Michigan State University and her master’s at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Peggy has taught creative writing classes for Madison College’s Continuing Education program and presented workshops on dialogue, character development, and other aspects of craft for the UW-Madison’s Writer’s Institute and for libraries and area writers’ organizations. She moonlights as a freelance editor for both non-fiction and fiction work. You can find her at www.peggywilliamsauthor.com.

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12:30pm-1:30pm: Panel Discussion with our 2023 Sarton & Gilda Award Winners

Pre-recorded session, moderated by SCN Vice President, Len Leatherwood. Enjoy excerpts from the original session while you grab lunch and take a break.

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1:40pm-2:40pm: Characterization Through Imagery with Yelizaveta Renfro

When we describe the world through our characters’ eyes, we need to see it exactly as they see it, creating images that align with their mental landscapes. In this workshop, we will practice seeing the same scene through the eyes of different characters, and we will explore how characters’ backgrounds, personalities, and preoccupations can have profound effects on their views of the world.

Yelizaveta P. Renfro is the author of Xylotheque, a collection of essays that won the Sarton Memoir Award, was a finalist for the Women Writing the West WILLA Literary Award, and a semifinalist for the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature. She also wrote A Catalogue of Everything in the World, a collection of short stories. Her work has appeared in numerous publications. Renfro has served as an artist-in-residence at Denali National Park, Isle Royale National Park, and Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. She currently teaches creative writing at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. Previously, she taught writing at Westfield State University and for nearly a decade at the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Renfro holds an MFA in Fiction from George Mason University and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has led writing workshops at various venues, including the Mark Twain House and the Southwest Michigan Writers’ Conference.

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2:50pm-3:50pm: Accessing our Deepest Stories with Marsha Jacobson

The best writing often comes from so deep within, it’s hard to reach. The inner critic, that tiny heckler sneering at your work as you write, makes it even harder. Participants will practice Mindfulness Writing, a prompt-writing technique shown by research, anecdotes, and even brain scans to bypass that critic and access their deepest stories. They will write and share three times and learn how to turn this group practice into an individual practice.

Marsha Jacobson is a memoirist and the author of personal essays and flash fiction. Her award- winning memoir, The Wrong Calamity, reveals the traumatic and ultimately triumphant personal life she kept private for decades from friends, family, and colleagues. After a long career as a consultant and business executive in organizations that include Mattel Toys Southeast Asia, the International Red Cross in Japan, Fidelity Investments, and the New England Organ Bank, she now lives in New York City and is a speaker, consultant, and writing coach dedicated to sharing actionable techniques for prevailing with resilience and confidence in our most challenging circumstances. Connect with Marsha and learn more about her memoir at marshajacobsonauthor.com.

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4:00pm-5:00pm: Carving Out Time and Space for Writing with Masha Rumer and Irena Smith

How do you find time to write when raising children or caring for family members, working outside the home, reckoning with long commutes, or fulfilling other significant obligations? Authors and experienced writing instructors Irena Smith and Masha Rumer will share strategies that helped them set goals, carve out time, and find the motivation to finish and publish their work. They will share their own experiences, help participants identify their strengths and articulate the “why” of their writing process, and find ways to connect with other writers undergoing similar challenges.

Masha Rumer is the author of Parenting with an Accent, which won the Sarton Award for Nonfiction in 2023. Born in the former Soviet Union, Masha moved to the United States, where she pursued her passion for language and storytelling. She taught Freshman Composition, Journalism, Memoir, and ESL at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, Remedial English at City College of San Francisco, and Composition and ESL at Stevens Institute of Technology. Masha’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Literary Hub, and more. She frequently speaks at public libraries, cultural organizations, and literary festivals, sharing her insights on writing, multicultural parenting, and bilingualism.

Irena Smith is the author of the recently released memoir The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays, which received SCN’s Gilda Prize in 2023. She emigrated to the United States from the former Soviet Union with her parents when she was nine years old, and in spite of her fierce insistence that she would never, ever learn to speak English, she went on to receive a PhD in Comparative Literature and taught humanities courses at UCLA and Stanford before transitioning to college admissions and writing. Her work has been published in Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis, Mutha, and Literary Mama, and she has presented at the Pebble Beach Authors and Ideas Festival and TEDx Palo Alto. She also writes two weekly Substacks— Personal Statements and The Golden Ticket (is not what you think).

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Early Bird Registration Rates (through 9/14): $49

Last Minutes Registration Rates (9/15-9/21): $69