F243.
Debuting with the Short Story Collection
Friday, February 9, 2024
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Many industry professionals counsel against debuting with a short story collection, and urge fiction writers to "wait until they have a novel." The writers on this panel all had successful debuts with story collections. On this panel we will discuss the benefits and pitfalls of debuting with a collection, how to successfully market your first book, and what craft benefits came with debuting with a story collection.
Participants
Molly Gott is a writer living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She received her MFA from the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program.
Gothataone Moeng is the author of the story collection Call and Response (Viking, 2023). She is a 2023–24 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a 2022/2023 fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and a 2018–20 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Lydia Conklin has received a Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and a Creative Writing Fulbright in Poland. They are an assistant professor of fiction at Vanderbilt. Their book Rainbow Rainbow was published by Catapult in May 2022.
Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award and a Pushcart Prize. Her debut collection, Milk Blood Heat, is a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award and the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and she teaches fiction at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Lydia Peelle
