2019 Writer’s Conference
White County Creative Writers’ 24th Annual Writers’ Conference will be held on August 31, 2019 on the second floor of the American Heritage Conference Center at Harding University in Searcy, AR.
Also featured are several writing contests, with contest awards presented during luncheon.
Conference Registrations must be postmarked by August 28, 2019. A registration fee of $25.00 includes the luncheon. Participants may also register the morning of the conference, but lunch may not be included.
Tables for book sales must be reserved in advance @$5.00 for ½ table (approx. 30″ x 36″).
Make checks payable to White County Creative Writers, and mail to:
WCCW
c/o Kim Vernon
P.O.Box 444
Pangburn, AR 72121
Click here to print a registration form.
NOTE: Contest entry fees are NOT included in the conference fee. See Contest Regulations for details.
Questions? Call 501-268-6426 or email Kimber.vernon@gmail.com
Click here for Conference Schedule
Meet Our Conference Speakers
Veda Boyd Jones
Historical Fiction Author
Veda Boyd Jones enjoys the challenge of writing for diverse readers. She is the author of forty-seven traditionally published books and five novellas, from a coloring book to nonfiction and fiction for children to romance novels for adults, and she’s written ten original ebooks.
Other published works include over 600 articles and stories in children’s and adult magazines (Cricket, Highlights, Humpty Dumpty, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Woman’s World, etc.), and articles in reference books.
Jones earned an MA in history at the University of Arkansas, has taught writing at Crowder College in Neosho, Missouri, and later for the Institute of Children’s Literature. She recently graduated with an MFA from Stonecoast in Maine.
Veda will speak on how to do research for fiction, both historical and contemporary, citing examples from her work, such as spending days at a TV station (newscaster as main character) and attending the citizens police academy (for a policewoman character for her latest ebook, Here’s Your Trouble).
Jo McDougall
Poet of the Arkansas Delta
Jo McDougall, a native of the Arkansas Delta, is the newly appointed Poet Laureate of Arkansas and the recipient of the 2019 Porter Prize Lifetime Achievement Award in Literature. She’s the author of seven books of poetry: The Woman in the Next Booth, Towns Facing Railroads, From Darkening Porches, Dirt, Satisfied with Havoc, In the Home of the Famous Dead: Collected Poems, and The Undiscovered Room. Her memoir, Daddy’s Money: A Memoir of Farm and Family, was published in 2011 by the University of Arkansas Press.
McDougall’s work has been adapted for film, theater, a song cycle (performed at the Royal Opera House, London), a wind ensemble, and an artist’s book. An adaptation of her work, titled Towns Facing Railroads, was staged at the Arkansas Repertory Theatre. Awards include a DeWitt Wallace/Reader’s Digest Award, fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Arkansas Arts Council, the annual Porter Prize for Literature, nominations for the Pushcart Prize, and an Academy of American Poets award. She has been inducted into the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame. The Jo McDougall Poetry Prize has been established this year by Eqjuinox, the student creative writing journal at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock.
Her poems have appeared in Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, Garrison Keillor’s Writers Almanac, and such literary journals as Arkansas Review, Georgia Review, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, Midwest Quarterly, North American Review, and Poetry East.
Widely anthologized, her poems can be found most recently in Women Make Arkansas (April 2019) and Across the Waves: Poems from Ireland and the United States (2020. They appear in She Walks In Beauty: a Woman’s Journey Through Poems, edited by Caroline Kennedy;The Poets Guide to the Birds, edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser; Garrison Keillor’s Good Poems for Hard Times; and others. McDougall lives in Little Rock with her husband, Charles; Zelda the Dog; and Spike the Cat.
Steve May
Author / Speaker / Publisher
Steve May is the publisher of Preaching Life Resources and the developer of Preaching Academy, course designed to help pastors and teachers excel in the ministry of public speaking.
Steve is the author of more than a dozen books and the founding editor of Preaching Library.
In addition to serving churches in Tennesssee, California, and Oklahoma, Steve spent 10 years in Rio de Janeiro doing ministry in poor communites, including planting a church and developing a medical clinic.
Steve’s session will focus on the process of writing non-fiction: “how-to” articles, essays, memoirs — and even blog posts.
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