TPR Managing Editor Andrew Geyer will discuss the 2024 edition of The Petigru Review.

Geyer is the author, co-author and editor of 11 books, including the novels Dixie Fish and Meeting the Dead and the short story collection Lesser Mountains, winner of the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Award Silver Medal for Regional/Southern Fiction. His short stories have won numerous accolades, including two Spur Awards for Best Short Story from the Western Writers of America.  A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the South Carolina Academy of Authors Literary Hall of Fame, Geyer chairs the English Department at USC-Aiken and is the fiction editor at the Concho River Review.

Join author Mindy Friddle for this Author's Toolbox at noon Thursday, May 23:

Make a Scene, Why Don’t You?! Scenes are the building blocks of stories and novels. Mastering scene-writing is a powerful way to develop characters, control pacing, and increase suspense. In this workshop, you will gain a deeper understanding of how you can use scenes (dialogue and action), alongside summary (description and reflection), to build stories and novels that have dramatic power and emotional impact.

Friddle is author of the novel, Secret Keepers, (winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction). The Garden Angel, her first novel and SIBA bestseller, was selected for Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers. The South Carolina Arts Commission awarded Friddle a prose fellowship, and she has twice won the state’s Fiction Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson and lives on Edisto Island, South Carolina.

NOTE THAT THIS EVENT IS FROM NOON TO 1 P.M.

Zoom link provided upon registration.

SUMMER NIGHTS / SUMMER WRITES: A Generative Workshop for all Genres

This workshop series is designed for writers of all genres to generate a ton of material over the course of June. Using examples from short fiction, nonfiction and poetry to guide us, we’ll move through a succession of writing prompts that employ both informal and formal prompts (i.e. photographs, abecedarians, found forms, the senses, ekphrasis, mad libs and more). By the end of June, you’ll have a boatload of new work to finesse over the rest of the summer.

Ditch your comfort zone and let’s write some weird and wonderful stuff together! If you miss a week, that’s okay. Sessions will be recorded and shared weekly.

AN ADDED BONUS! The series includes written editorial feedback on one piece of writing written over the course of the month as well as an individual 20-minute meeting with me during the first week of July to discuss your work and answer any questions you may have about writing and publication.

OMG ANOTHER BONUS! The series will conclude with an Open Mic in mid-July for those wishing to participate. You’ve done the work, now share it with the world!

WEEK 1, Tuesday, 6/4: Using the senses

WEEK 2, Tuesday 6/11: Found forms & structures

WEEK 3, Tuesday, 6/18: The objects all around us

WEEK 4, Tuesday, 6/25: Generative revision strategies

Member price: $140

Nonmember price: $175

Amber Wheeler Bacon is a writer and teacher whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Ecotone, Epiphany, Five Points, New Ohio Review, Post Road, Prairie Schooner and Witness. You can find her writing online at Ploughshares, CRAFT, Fiction Writer’s Review and New South. She’s the recipient of the 2018 Breakout Writers Prize sponsored by The Author’s Guild and a 2021 Bread Loaf scholarship. She received the 2022 Lit/South Award for flash fiction, a 2023 Prairie Schooner Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Chautauqua Janus Prize, nominated by Ecotone Magazine. Amber has an MFA from Bennington College and teaches English at Coastal Carolina University. She’s been a staff reader for Ploughshares, a fiction editor at Four Way Review, Managing Editor for South Carolina Writers Association publications and a daily editor at the Southern Review of Books. She lives by the beach in South Carolina. Amber is represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk at Trellis Literary Management.

-------------------------------

Also join Amber Wheeler Bacon for Wake Up & Write: A Daily Writing Accountability Group. Register here.

WAKE UP & WRITE: A Daily Writing Accountability Group

Not every writer needs to write every day, but often, the most successful writers do engage in a daily practice. And there’s a wonderful thing that happens when you perform a task over and over until it becomes habit: you get better at it.

For the months of July and August, commit to writing every day with me from 8 to 9 a.m. There will be a daily prompt for those in need, special guests weekly to inspire us and a time for those who wish to share and/or ask questions from 9 to 9:30 a.m.

Additional materials will be shared for writers hoping for that extra bit of motivation, like daily tasks to complete during our off-line hours and curated written, audio and video writing advice from bestselling authors.

Whether you’ve got one big project or multiple, a tight deadline or all the time in the world, sign up and let’s show ourselves and one another that we’re committed to our craft and the stories that only we can tell.

Member price: $25 / month or $45 for both months

Non-member price: $40 / month or $75 for both months

Group leader Amber Wheeler Bacon is a writer and teacher whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Ecotone, Epiphany, Five Points, New Ohio Review, Post Road, Prairie Schooner and Witness. You can find her writing online at Ploughshares, CRAFT, Fiction Writer’s Review and New South. She’s the recipient of the 2018 Breakout Writers Prize sponsored by The Author’s Guild and a 2021 Bread Loaf scholarship. She received the 2022 Lit/South Award for flash fiction, a 2023 Prairie Schooner Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Chautauqua Janus Prize, nominated by Ecotone Magazine. Amber has an MFA from Bennington College and teaches English at Coastal Carolina University. She’s been a staff reader for Ploughshares, a fiction editor at Four Way Review, Managing Editor for South Carolina Writers Association publications and a daily editor at the Southern Review of Books. She lives by the beach in South Carolina. Amber is represented by Amy Bishop-Wycisk at Trellis Literary Management.

-----------------------

Also join Amber Wheeler Bacon for Summer Nights / Summer Writes: A Generative Workshop for All Genres. Register here.

Join acclaimed writer Stephen Hundley for a one-hour talk on writing short stories and novels—and adding fantasy and science fiction to traditional Southern stories.

Hundley is the author of The Aliens Will Come to Georgia First (University of North Georgia Press, 2023) and Bomb Island (Hub City Press, 2024), “a funny and fast-paced” novel that is part coming-of-age romance and part thriller, says Hundley’s publisher.

He is a fiction editor at Driftwood Press and a book review editor at the Southeast Review.

His stories and poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cream City Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MA from Clemson and an MFA from the University of Mississippi. He is currently completing a PhD in English at Florida State University.

Award-winning Southern author Ron Rash calls Hundley’s Bomb Island “a remarkable novel by an immensely talented young writer.”

Alex Rath is a best-selling military science fiction and post-apocalyptic author, who lives in Columbia, South Carolina. With works published in the Four Horsemen Universe, This Fallen World, and the Salvage Title universe, Rath has now spread out with his own Colonization Science Fiction with the Terran Space Project, starting with Seeds of Terra. He has been an IT professional for more than years. He has worked as a programmer/developer, webmaster, information security specialist and solutions design specialist. This background allows him to incorporate some technical savvy into his stories, while his experience interacting with non-technical customers allows him to do so in a way that isn’t confusing, or “too technical” for a layperson to understand.

The South Carolina Writers Association will host its annual conference, 2024 Storyfest, Sept. 27 through 29 in Columbia, featuring more than a dozen acclaimed authors, agents and editors.

The event, to be held at the DoubleTree by Hilton, will include talks and classes by writers from South Carolina, Georgia, California and New York, including Lynn Cullen, national bestselling author of “The Girl with a Cure” and “Mrs. Poe;” Grady Hendrix, screenwriter and author of “How to Sell a Haunted House” and “The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires;” and Tiffany Yates Martin, author of six novels and the how-to book “Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing.”

Other features of 2024 Storyfest will be masterclasses, free talks, panels and keynotes addresses, manuscript critiques, craft classes, and meetings with sought-after editors and agents, including Andrew Geyer, the award-winning author or co-author of 10 books and editor of SCWA’s literary journal, The Petigru Review.

Other speakers include award-winning South Carolina novelist and short story writer Scott Gould; Southern Indie Bookstore bestselling author Mindy Friddle; Columbia poet laureate Jennifer Bartell Boykin; New York Times noteworthy author Cinelle Barnes; military science fiction and post-apocalyptic writer Alex Rath; and screenwriter and producer Alan Roth, a winner of the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship Award in Screenwriting.

Some of the South’s top publishers also will attend, including Arcadia Publishing, Palmetto Publishing and the University of South Carolina Press.

Registration opens TODAY, April 15, with early bird registration fees for the full three-day conference of $250 for members and $325 for nonmembers; those fees will increase by $30 on June 16, so register early to save! Student registration for the full conference is $140. A one-day ticket for SATURDAY SESSIONS ONLY is available for $195. Masterclasses, manuscript critiques and query pitches will be available for additional charges as add-ons to your registration. For full details go to 2024 Storyfest. If you are not a member of SCWA, join now to enjoy the member rate for Storyfest along with other SCWA benefits. Membership is $75 annually; go to Join Us. (Be sure to renew if you haven't already!)

The hotel rate is $169 (plus taxes and fees) for 1 king or 2 queen beds. For reservation information, go to the 2024 Storyfest main page.

Lisa Harrison (right) and Brenda Gardner will present the Author's Toolbox at 7 p.m. Oct. 18. Harrison is the co-host of The Friends and Fiction Official book club with Brenda and Lisa, a marketing and social media professional, a correspondent for nicegirlstv.com (a website that focuses on TV shows with strong female characters), a self-proclaimed nerd and lover of the arts. Harrison is a client support specialist in finance, but she is also an actor and voiceover artist who received a BA in theatre arts from Georgia Southern University with a minor in Spanish. She enjoys attending book festivals, fan conventions and is a regular panelist at DragonCon for the Urban Fantasy, Horror, and American Science Fiction and Fantasy Media tracks. Harrison loves to read literary fiction, romance, cozy mysteries, thrillers and witchy books. She is a member of the Atlanta Writers Club, the Broadleaf Writers Association and is currently writing her first novel. You can keep up with Harrison on Instagram @LisaGetsLit

Gardner is co-host of the Friends & Fiction Official Book Club with Brenda and Lisa and has been a lover of books and libraries since childhood. She was a journalism undergraduate and worked in newspapers before shifting to public relations, grant writing, and then local government administration. She has a master of public administration and now works to improve the future workforce pipeline. Gardner's favorite genres are literary fiction and historical fiction. She is a regular attendee at Yallfest and the Savannah Book Festival, and has presented several times at the virtual Epigraph Literary Festival. You can follow her on Instagram @Brendabythebook.

Photo and details to come