Current Newsletter
A Note from the DirectorWelcome, everyone!
With six weeks to go before our second annual conference, we are working hard behind the scenes to make sure 2018 is as successful as our inaugural event. While we are creating the program, making venue and catering arrangements, and ordering conference materials, we hope you will take the time to register and make your travel and lodging arrangements if you haven't already done so.
Please read all of the information about registration, travel, and lodging before using the online registration system.
As we continue our preparations, we wish you all happy reading, happy writing.
~ Sandy Longhorn, Director
~ Gabrielle Lawrence, Intern
Congratulations 2018 Nan Snow WinnersThe conference demonstrates its commitment to promising new women-identifying writers by sponsoring the Nan Snow Emerging Writer Award. We are excited to announce this year's winners, who will read from their work on Saturday, November 10, 2018 during one of our breakout sessions.
Ellie Black—First Place
Ellie Black is a recent graduate of Hendrix College. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming from Gingerbread House, Split Lip Magazine, and Best New Poets 2018; she was recently a semifinalist for both the Adroit Prizes in Poetry and the Boulevard Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. She has been an Oxford American intern and a June fellow at the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, and she currently works as a poetry reader at the Adroit Journal and an Associate Editor with Sibling Rivalry Press.
Stacey Balkun—Second Place
Stacey Balkun is the author of two chapbooks: Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak & Lost City Museum. Winner of the 2017 Women's National Book Association Poetry Prize and the 2017 Faulkner Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2018, Crab Orchard Review, The Rumpus,and other anthologies and journals. Chapbook Series Editor for Sundress Publications, Stacey holds an MFA from Fresno State and teaches poetry online at The Poetry Barn & The Loft.
Jennifer 'Coffy' Davis—Third Place
Jennifer 'Coffy' Davis, a native of Oakland, California, moved to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1999; the place of her family's roots. In 2004 she created The Underground Railroad Neighborhood project (TURN project) an initiative that bridged art and literacy with at-risk communities. Along with a troupe of artists, Jennifer produced and directed a stage play titled, Freedom, that gained local and regional acclaim. She is a spoken word artist and founding member of the local troupe, Foreign Tongues that has won local and national awards. In 2017 Jennifer was awarded the Arkansas Art’s Council Fellowship Award for Creative Non-Fiction for her novel, Medusa.
Taneum Bambrick—Honorable Mention
A Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Taneum Bambrick is the author of Reservoir, (selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2017 Yemassee Chapbook Contest). Her work appears in Academy of American Poets, Blackbird, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She’s received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
2018 Keynote Speakers
In an interview with Electric Lit, Vincent Scarpa commented on Megan Mayhew Bergman's short story collection Almost Famous Women with the following: “in choosing to resurrect these women, you’re not interested in drastically rewriting or revising or playing with them so much as simply imagining yourself into their interior landscapes and then writing outward from there.” Bergman’s views on reviving historical women through writing, and Allison Joseph’s talent for tackling racism and sexism through poetry by declaring the richness of her experience, add further depth to the conference mission: to celebrate and to support women writers from a variety of backgrounds and experiences both within and outside of academia. This year, we’re excited to have both of these women offering their insights in support of women-identifying writers on the writing life at large.
Allison Joseph
Allison Joseph, speaking on Friday night, is the director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University and the poetry editor of the Crab Orchard Review. In addition to her latest release, Confessions of a Barefaced Woman, she’ll be sharing work from her brand new chapbook Corporal Muse. She’s involved in a number of “passion projects for the literary community,” including the Creative Writers Opportunities List [CRWROPPS-B], a regularly updated email subscription that shares postings on contests, fellowships, calls for submissions and jobs for creative writers.
Megan Mayhew Bergman
Megan Mayhew Bergman, speaking on Saturday afternoon, works at Bennington College where she oversees the Robert Frost Stone House Museum and teaches in the literature department. In addition to directing Middlebury's Breadloaf Environmental Writer's Program, she is an essayist for The Paris Review and contributes literary criticism to The Washington Post and New York Times. Birds of a Lesser Paradise, her first story collection, was a Barnes and Noble Discover pick, Indie Next selection, and one of Huffington Post's Best Books of 2012.
Connections Made
November 2017
Three book contracts signed.
Multiple pieces accepted for publication in journals and anthologies.
Two attendees interviewed for press publications, with one later featured in a syndicated column.
Three attendees secured internships with three different presses.
Two writing groups formed that continue to meet.
An unquantifiable amount of inspiration abounded as writers networked, mentored, and shared their stories.
The C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference is supported and hosted by the University of Central Arkansas, with thanks to the University of Central Arkansas Foundation.
With six weeks to go before our second annual conference, we are working hard behind the scenes to make sure 2018 is as successful as our inaugural event. While we are creating the program, making venue and catering arrangements, and ordering conference materials, we hope you will take the time to register and make your travel and lodging arrangements if you haven't already done so.
Please read all of the information about registration, travel, and lodging before using the online registration system.
As we continue our preparations, we wish you all happy reading, happy writing.
~ Sandy Longhorn, Director
~ Gabrielle Lawrence, Intern
Congratulations 2018 Nan Snow WinnersThe conference demonstrates its commitment to promising new women-identifying writers by sponsoring the Nan Snow Emerging Writer Award. We are excited to announce this year's winners, who will read from their work on Saturday, November 10, 2018 during one of our breakout sessions.
Ellie Black—First Place
Ellie Black is a recent graduate of Hendrix College. Her work can be found in or is forthcoming from Gingerbread House, Split Lip Magazine, and Best New Poets 2018; she was recently a semifinalist for both the Adroit Prizes in Poetry and the Boulevard Poetry Contest for Emerging Poets. She has been an Oxford American intern and a June fellow at the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, and she currently works as a poetry reader at the Adroit Journal and an Associate Editor with Sibling Rivalry Press.
Stacey Balkun—Second Place
Stacey Balkun is the author of two chapbooks: Jackalope-Girl Learns to Speak & Lost City Museum. Winner of the 2017 Women's National Book Association Poetry Prize and the 2017 Faulkner Poetry Prize, her work has appeared in Best New Poets 2018, Crab Orchard Review, The Rumpus,and other anthologies and journals. Chapbook Series Editor for Sundress Publications, Stacey holds an MFA from Fresno State and teaches poetry online at The Poetry Barn & The Loft.
Jennifer 'Coffy' Davis—Third Place
Jennifer 'Coffy' Davis, a native of Oakland, California, moved to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1999; the place of her family's roots. In 2004 she created The Underground Railroad Neighborhood project (TURN project) an initiative that bridged art and literacy with at-risk communities. Along with a troupe of artists, Jennifer produced and directed a stage play titled, Freedom, that gained local and regional acclaim. She is a spoken word artist and founding member of the local troupe, Foreign Tongues that has won local and national awards. In 2017 Jennifer was awarded the Arkansas Art’s Council Fellowship Award for Creative Non-Fiction for her novel, Medusa.
Taneum Bambrick—Honorable Mention
A Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Taneum Bambrick is the author of Reservoir, (selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2017 Yemassee Chapbook Contest). Her work appears in Academy of American Poets, Blackbird, Pleiades, and elsewhere. She’s received scholarships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
2018 Keynote Speakers
In an interview with Electric Lit, Vincent Scarpa commented on Megan Mayhew Bergman's short story collection Almost Famous Women with the following: “in choosing to resurrect these women, you’re not interested in drastically rewriting or revising or playing with them so much as simply imagining yourself into their interior landscapes and then writing outward from there.” Bergman’s views on reviving historical women through writing, and Allison Joseph’s talent for tackling racism and sexism through poetry by declaring the richness of her experience, add further depth to the conference mission: to celebrate and to support women writers from a variety of backgrounds and experiences both within and outside of academia. This year, we’re excited to have both of these women offering their insights in support of women-identifying writers on the writing life at large.
Allison Joseph
Allison Joseph, speaking on Friday night, is the director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Southern Illinois University and the poetry editor of the Crab Orchard Review. In addition to her latest release, Confessions of a Barefaced Woman, she’ll be sharing work from her brand new chapbook Corporal Muse. She’s involved in a number of “passion projects for the literary community,” including the Creative Writers Opportunities List [CRWROPPS-B], a regularly updated email subscription that shares postings on contests, fellowships, calls for submissions and jobs for creative writers.
Megan Mayhew Bergman
Megan Mayhew Bergman, speaking on Saturday afternoon, works at Bennington College where she oversees the Robert Frost Stone House Museum and teaches in the literature department. In addition to directing Middlebury's Breadloaf Environmental Writer's Program, she is an essayist for The Paris Review and contributes literary criticism to The Washington Post and New York Times. Birds of a Lesser Paradise, her first story collection, was a Barnes and Noble Discover pick, Indie Next selection, and one of Huffington Post's Best Books of 2012.
Connections Made
November 2017
Three book contracts signed.
Multiple pieces accepted for publication in journals and anthologies.
Two attendees interviewed for press publications, with one later featured in a syndicated column.
Three attendees secured internships with three different presses.
Two writing groups formed that continue to meet.
An unquantifiable amount of inspiration abounded as writers networked, mentored, and shared their stories.
The C.D. Wright Women Writers Conference is supported and hosted by the University of Central Arkansas, with thanks to the University of Central Arkansas Foundation.