We’re late to the blog party this week, but that’s because the whole board is still recovering from the absolute euphoria that was our Quadrennial Conference. If you weren’t able to make it, we’ll be providing a recap in the coming weeks. I promise. However, for now, I’m stealing this slot in our still young and malleable editorial calendar to slip in a shameless plug for our latest offering: Hooks & Lines, a summer writing workshop series developed in partnership with Carteret Community College.

These hands-on workshops are going to be fun and inspiring for writers of all levels and backgrounds, and there’s a little something for everybody. Think the best parts of summer camp without the mosquitos and the sweating. It’s an opportunity to explore all kinds of writing and connect with all kinds of local writers, and it’s going to be all kinds of awesome, so you should come!

Dates & Topics

  • Monday, May 15: Creative play and writing
  • Monday, May 22: Using real life to inspire fiction
  • Monday, June 5: Writing creative non-fiction
  • Monday, June 12: Writing poetry
  • Monday, June 19: Transforming a scene into a script
  • Monday, June 26: Shameless plugs and how to get away with them (a.k.a. the dark arts of marketing)

About the Facilitators

Emily Carter, our fearless Veep, left a career in the corporate world to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming a writer, and y’all, she’s good. She’s contributed work to Haunted Waters Press, Flying South, and the North Carolina Literary Review, among others. Her lyrics “Made to Be Played” placed fourth in the 2022 American Songwriters Lyrics competition, and she was selected as part of NCWN’s Master Classes in 2021 and 2022. She’s going to be leading your poetry and creative non-fiction workshops, and you’re going to love every minute of it. If you haven’t had the pleasure, you can get to know her better at her website A Chick’s View. You could also read this fantastic interview with Emily conducted by our Treasurer Jen “Oh No She Didn’t” Heironimus, who asks the questions on everybody’s minds.

Tom Kies, whom you may remember from his recent turn as MC Extraordinaire at the Quadrennial Conference, also happens to be the author of the Geneva Chase Mystery Series. He’s published by Poisoned Pen Press, and he was nominated for the 2022 Sue Grafton Memorial Award by the Mystery Writers of America. What I’m saying is that he can be trusted with the fiction writing workshop. He also recently collaborated with CCC and Carteret Community Theater in developing a script for the murder mystery theater production Death of an Author, in which he immediately killed himself off, and everybody loved it. I’ll let you judge from that how trustworthy his scriptwriting instincts are. You can get to know Tom better at his author website or in Jen’s insightful pre-conference interview with him.

As for me, I’ll be getting you warmed up on May 15 with a workshop on creative play and writing, and you can trust me with that because isn’t playful creativity just oozing out of this post? Please tell me it is because I’m really going for it. But if my enthusiasm is not enough, I’ve also written on innovative writing instruction for Edutopia and for the U.K.-based education journal Creative Teaching & Learning. During our final workshop, we’ll bring it home by exploring how to use your writing skills to promote your writing skills. (It’s gonna get meta as a postmodern novel with footnotes up in Wayne West Building on June 26, my friends.) I’ll also share what I’ve learned in my decade as a marketing copywriter and during my time promoting my own campy Cold War YA adventure series Perilous and Sparks. You can get to know me better at my humbly named blog Autumn the Writer. As of yet, no one has interviewed me. *sniff*

Other Details

You can splurge on this summer writing workshop series because it’s a bargain at $58. You can’t feed a family of four at Taco Bell for that, so go loco!

  1. To register, click on this link: https://ss-prod-cloud.carteret.edu/Student/InstantEnrollment.
  2. Type “writing workshop” into the field labeled Course Code Number.
  3. Click Search at the bottom of the page.

You’ll see the workshop series identified as Hooks & Lines. From there, just follow the instructions to register. (Or show up on May 15 and bring a check. You are not likely to get turned away by me.)