Award-winning writer Lydia Millet, author of six novels, will be the keynote presenter at the Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration in Sierra Vista in March.
Award-winning writer Lydia Millet is the author of six novels.
The 12th annual event, set for March 26-27, brings together published writers in several genres, such as poetry, novels, creative nonfiction, juvenile fiction, and screenwriting, to present hands-on workshops to aspiring writers from the community.
It also gives unpublished authors a chance to shine. Conference registrants can participate in a writing contest associated with the celebration. Submissions will be accepted in the areas of poetry, short story, and non-fiction. The deadline to submit entries to the contest, which is open to anyone who registers for the celebration, is Monday, Feb. 22. Cash prizes will be awarded on the final day of the event.
Millet is the author of six novels, most recently “How the Dead Dream (2008),” which was named a best book of the year by the “Los Angeles Times.” She has written one collection of short stories, “Love in Infant Monkeys (2009).” Her 2002 novel, “My Happy Life,” won the PEN-USA Award for Fiction, and “Oh Pure and Radiant Heart (2005)” was shortlisted for Britain’s Arthur C. Clarke Prize. Millet lives in the Arizona desert with her husband and two small children, where she works as a writer and editor for a group that protects endangered species.
In her keynote address Writing at the End of the World, Millet will discuss the role of fiction in a society dominated by newer media and a publishing environment determined by large corporations. She will examine what fiction does and can mean in a rapidly changing technological and material landscape and the relationship of sophisticated, ambitious literary narratives to personal and cultural self-awareness in the 21st century.
Millet also will present the breakout session Characters that Compel about writing characters through voice and imaginative play.
The writing celebration features three additional authors.
Fenton Johnson, a University of Arizona creative writing professor and Guggenheim and Arizona Commission on the Arts fellowship recipient, presents The Lion and the Lamb, or the Facts and the Truth: Memoir as Bridge about the age-old controversy about when and how one should and shouldn’t modify material for the sake of a better story.
Howard Allen, a professional actor, playwright, director, screenwriter, and literary manager/dramaturg affiliated with scriptdoctor.com, covers the basics of visual storytelling in Screenwriting is Text and Subtext.
Logan Phillips, formerly a professor of Hispanic American Literature at Universidad Internacionál in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and currently a co-founder of the binational multimedia performance group Verbolala Spoken Video and author of five poetry chapbooks, presents Words Between Our Teeth: A Workshop on Speaking Poems.
The creative writing celebration is co-sponsored by Cochise College, the University South Foundation, and Sierra Vista Parks & Leisure Services. Conference brochures will be available soon. To learn more about the event and the writing contest, visit the Cochise College Web site at www.cochise.edu, or contact Leslie Clark at clarkl@cochise.edu or (520) 417-4112, or Jay Treiber at treiberj@cochise.edu or (520) 417-4765.