I love connecting with the writing community, whether I’m teaching seminars, delivering rousing keynote speeches to rival NPR’s The Delicious Dish, or seeking out new clients at pitchfests across the country. I highly encourage you to get out there, make those connections, educate yourself about the business and the craft, and return home with the fire you need to make your manuscript the kind that makes me drool. As you can see on the Conferences page, I do quite a few of these. I’ll be recapping them right here, hopefully giving you what you need to decide which events are right for you. If there’s any info you’d like that I don’t touch on, feel free to comment below. This series, like our agency, will be ever-evolving.
Event: Cirque du Work
Location: Mills College, Oakland, CA
Length: 2 days
Cost: Free
Website: http://cirqueduwork.wordpress.com/
This one was a smaller event, I’d guess under 50 people, many of them MFA students and Mills alumni. What small conferences sometimes lose in energy, they almost always make up for in intimacy. You get a chance to spend real time and make personal connections with just about everyone there, and this was no exception. I was one of 4 agents attending, and the presenters also included authors, poets, publishers, graduates, and writing professionals, resulting in a rather impressive faculty to student ratio. This one is for writers of all stripes: poets, novelists, memoirists, essayists, I even met a cartographer there.
Friday was their “boot camp,” which focused on essentially answering the age-old question of, “I have my MFA, now what?” Interview skills, CV assembly, and crafting a letter of intent were among those very practical workshops.
Saturday was the day for panels and agent meetings. The panels (and viewpoints expressed) varied greatly, centering on such practical topics as jobs in higher education, paths to publication, cultivating writing communities, and juggling your art with a day job.
The meeting format was very relaxed, utilizing a nice, bright space with individual stations for 15 minute one-on-one sessions with attendees. Meetings of that length tend to be less like a “speed dating” pitch session and more like a consultation. With each writer, I found myself asking detailed questions and getting a thorough idea of the project at hand, the stage of career, goals, etc. so I could provide the necessary guidance. There were some bright kids of various ages, and I’m looking forward to a few submissions.
Get ready because I’m going to use all caps here. It doesn’t happen often, so note the time and place. This event is… wait for it… wait for it… FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. They even provide lunch and beverages on Saturday, encouraging everyone to hang out in between sessions and at a post-conference mixer.
One reason why I love being based in Northern California is the abundance of quality community events for writers, this one included. It was my first time attending, and I’ll definitely return.
