June 23, 2015
Footnotes
In This Issue
2015 Members Meeting at the Hyatt
Regency
2015 Summer Writing Retreat
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and we will respond with more details.
Click HERE to read WLT
member
Kirsche Romo's review
of
The Contest by Bennett
Easton.
"Meet the Members"
2015 Summer Writing Retreat
2015 Summer Writing
Retreat:
Two Classes Still Available!
July 18-23, 2015
Sul Ross State University
Alpine, TX
During this six-day retreat, five intensive writing
workshops will be taught simultaneously by five of
Texas' premier authors, offering a unique experience
for participants to enjoy an intimate class setting
during the day and a larger group dynamic outside of
the classroom throughout the week.
Open to all genres and categories within fiction, nonfiction, memoir and poetry, with classes for both
beginners and more seasoned writers, this retreat is
Want to be profiled on
our blog? We are looking
for willing subjects for
our weekly Q&A posts
with current members. If
interested, write us at
[email protected].
singular in its focus, its emphasis on community, and its
low registration rates.
As of June 23, seats are available in Michael Hall's
narrative nonfiction workshop and Scott Wiggerman's
poetry workshop. See class descriptions below.
Click here to read class descriptions and register.
Member News
Hilda V. Carpenter, PhD. (Driftwood),
local humorist writer, will be signing
copies of the third book of her first
trilogy, Rural Genius: Secrets to LongTerm Marriages, on Thursday, July
16th,
5:30-7:00pm at Hays City Store in
Driftwood, TX. Her country humor and
wit will make you laugh.
Christy Esmahan's (Katy)medical
thriller/hard scifi novel,The Laptev
Virus, begins when an oil company
drilling in the Arctic accidentally
discovers a virus that has been frozen
for 30,000 years. It turns out to be
infectious, causing Ebola-like symptoms.
Now an investigative team must try to
learn its secrets before competitors
drain the basin of oil.
Jacqueline Kelly's (Austin) new
novel The Curious World of Calpurnia
Tate (Henry Holt) publishes July 7. Join
her at BookPeople on Tuesday, July 7 at
7:00 pm for a book release party!
David Morris Parson's (Austin)
novel The Divorce Comedy has been
optioned as a TV series by Resolute
Productions. Inspired by Dante's
masterpiece, The Divorce Comedy is the
hilarious journey of Randall Goode as
he comes out of the closet, separates
from his adulterous wife, and goes
through the divorce from hell. Literally.
David's latest short story "Oysters" has
been published in the Spring 2015 issue
2015 Summer Writing Retreat
Spotlight On:
Capturing Real Life:
Long-Form Narrative in a Short-Form
World
with Texas Monthly's Michael
Hall
July 18-23, 2015
Sul Ross State University
Alpine, TX
$329 members/ $379 nonmembers
This course will give you the basic tools to write
lengthy, narrative-driven stories that are more about
attitude than objectivity, more about getting at the
heart of a story than just the facts.
Participants in this class will read and dissect some
great sample stories, analyzing the key elements that
make them sing. In addition, participants will learn:
how to conduct great interviews and how to get people
to open up and share intimate details; what goes into
of Cold Mountain Review. The story and
issue can be found here.
Mary Bryan Stafford's (Liberty Hill)
poem Spring Night has been selected to
be published in the 2016 Texas Poetry
Calendar. It's about her favorite subject-the horse.
Send Us Your Member
News
"Member News" is a perfect way for
WLT members to share their news
about signings, appearances, book
releases, publications, etc. At least
two weeks before desired
publication date, please send your
50-word blurb to:
[email protected]
 You must be a current
member of the Writers'
League.
 Describe success story or
upcoming event in 50
words or less.
 Urls and websites can be
hyperlinked, if provided.
Items might be edited for style and
publication dates will be determined
by theFootnotes editor.
2015 Members
Meeting
Hyatt Regency
Friday, June 26, 2015
5:00 pm
208 Barton Springs Road
Austin, TX
We'd love to see you!
Whether you're planning to attend
the 2015 Agents & Editors
Conference this year or not, this
members meeting is open to any
and all current WLT members. The
developing sources and how to be pushy--but not so
pushy that you push sources away.
By the time the class is done, students will have a
better understanding of how to put their ideas
together into a compelling piece that readers won't be
able to put down.
This class will be valuable for anyone looking to publish
long-form articles (in print or online) and could be
especially valuable to academics, bloggers looking to
transition to long-form, and writers of memoir or other
types of nonfiction.
Michael Hall graduated from the
University of Texas at Austin in 1979. Before
joining Texas Monthly in 1997, he was an
associate editor of Third Coastmagazine and
the managing editor of the Austin Chronicle.
He won a Texas Gavel Award in 2003 for his
story about capital punishment, "Death Isn't
Fair,"which was also nominated for a
National Magazine Award. Hall's stories have appeared in
the Best American Magazine Writing, the Best American
Sportswriting, the Best American Nonrequired Reading,
and Da Capo Best Music Writing. He has also written
for Trouser Press, the New York Times, Men's Journal, and
the Austin American-Statesman.
2015 Summer Writing Retreat
Spotlight On:
Radical Re-visioning for
Poets
with Scott Wiggerman
July 18-23, 2015
Sul Ross State University
Alpine, TX
$329 members/ $379 nonmembers
evening will include a report from
the staff and board of directors,
announcements about upcoming
programming and added member
benefits, celebratory news about
your latest accomplishments, and
more. PLUS complimentary tasty
bites and beverages and a cash bar.
Please do RSVP by this Thursday
(6/25) at noon if you're planning to
attend.
Feel free to call us with any
questions in the meantime:512-4998914, or
email:[email protected].
See You
After the 4th!
The WLT Offices will be closed due
to post-conference fatigue
syndrome, from June 29-July 3. We
will reopen on Monday, July 6 at
10:00 am, fully recovered.
Attention, Members!
A notice of intent to hold an
election to amend the Writers'
League of Texas' Bylaws has been
posted on our website. For more
information, follow this link. If you
have questions, please contact the
Writers' League office at (512) 4998914 [email protected].
#WLTOverheard
Be clear, while editing is an important aspect of
revision, many poets don't take editing beyond surface
revisions-corrected spelling, changed punctuation, a
change in a word or two, suggested deletions, possible
rephrasing of lines. No doubt these kinds of things are
helpful, but they are only part of revision. True revision
involves a complete "re-visioning." It's this kind of
radical revision that this class aims to apply to your
drafts.
Each morning will begin with warm-up drafts to get the
day flowing, but the rest of the day will concentrate on
radical revisions of drafts that you bring with you to
Alpine. Among the approaches will be some of the
revision exercises from the two Wingbeats volumes,
including Jill Alexander Essbaum's "Right Turn, Clyde:
Ten Variations on a Broken Poem," Scott Wiggerman's
"Two Wrongs Make a Right: Revision through
Recycling," and Laurie Kutchins' "Scissors & Gluesticks:
Re-Visioning the Poem." In addition we will try several
techniques from Poem, Revised-redrafting poems by
syllable count and/or stressed beats; reordering
chronology; turning prose into poetry, and free verse
into poetic forms.
Wiggerman's classes are known for experimentation,
and certainly this class is no exception. If you are
willing to leave your comfort zone and take on the
techniques of radical revision, your poetry can only
benefit from the Alpine experience. Expect to work
hard all week, but play hard too (including an evening
of wine, dessert, and poetry exclusively for the
members of this class).
Scott Wiggerman is the author of three
books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets,
Presence, and
Vegetables and Other Relationships. He is
the editor of several volumes,
including Lifting the Sky: Southwestern
Haiku & Haiga and Wingbeats: Exercises &
Practice in Poetry, named in the 2015 Poet's Market as one
Hear a great quote from a panelist
at Third Thursday? Did an instructor
inspire you at one of our Saturday
classes? Let us know about your
WLT-related "aha-moments" on
Twitter:
@WritersLeague
#WLTOverheard
of "Six Stellar Sources of Poetry Prompts." Recent poems
have appeared in Decades Review, Frogpond, Pinyon
Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and the
anthologies Forgetting Home: Poems about Alzheimer's and
the Lambda award-winning This Assignment Is So
Gay. Wiggerman is chief editor for Dos Gatos Press in Austin,
Texas, publisher of the Texas Poetry Calendar, now in its
eighteenth year.
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The Writers' League of Texas
is a non-profit corporation, funded in part by the Texas Commission on the
Arts.
This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of
Austin Economic Development Department.
611 S. Congress Ave., Ste. 200 A-3, Austin, TX 78704/ 512-499-8914/ [email protected]