V108.

Debuting as a "senior" writer: Why are there never "50 over 50" features?

Virtual
Wednesday, March 8, 2023
12:00 pm to 1:00 pm

 

Raymond Carver. Anna Sewell. Frank McCourt. Laura Ingalls Wilder. Each had their debut after the age of 50. In an industry obsessed with youth, no one ever talks about the mental overload of being an older writer whose first full-length publication occurs long after their twenty-ninth year. We'll give tips for writers till trying to get their big break after years of "hobby" writing or entering an MFA program next to writers young enough to be their children (or grandchildren).

This event has been prerecorded, and will be available to watch on-demand online from March 8, 2023 to April 8, 2023.



Participants

Moderator:

Wendy Wimmer's writing has appeared in Blackbird, Per Contra, Barrelhouse, Waxwing, Paper Darts, and more. She holds a master of arts in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and is a Black Mountain Institute PhD fellow at UNLV. She is fiction editor of Witness magazine.

Julie Silverman, graduate of Chatham University, MFA creative nonfiction 2020 concentration in nature writing, published in Ad Astra, Ekphrastic Review, Huffington Post, The Under Review, Celestal Review, Griffith Observer, and regular contributor to Pittsburgh Post Gazette's Stargazer column.

Lynda Montgomery began writing fiction at the age of 39, and over the subsequent thirteen years has been published in several journals and has been a fellow at Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, and VCCA. In 2020 she received an Ohio Art Council Individual Excellence Award for fiction.

Christina Clancy is the author of Shoulder Season and The Second Home (St. Martin's Press). Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Sun, Glimmer Train Stories, Hobart, Pleiades, and on Wisconsin Public Radio. She has a PhD in creative writing from UW-Milwaukee.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center