Conference Session

Lit!Series Craft Seminar Pass — October 2024

This full-weekend pass includes access to three 2-hour Craft Seminars taught by our Visiting Teaching Artists, Safia Elhillo, Jake Maia Arlow, and Ashley Hope Perez, as well as a group wrap-up session at the end of the weekend. Each seminar will conclude with a Q&A with the author and the wrap-up session will be a chance for you to apply what you’ve learned to your own work!

Craft Seminar registrants will also get access to our two Lunchtime Learning sessions with: our Keynote, Carmen Maria Machado, on Saturday and our Visiting Publishing Experts on Sunday. A complimentary ticket to the Keynote Conversation on Saturday night and the Friday night party is also included with registration. Breakfast and lunch will be provided on Saturday and Sunday.

Register early! If you register for a Craft Seminar pass before 9/20, you will be entered to receive a FREE consultation with our Visiting Editor, Carmen Gimenez.

If you would like to request ASL interpretation or other accessibility accommodations for any of the weekend's events, please email Shahenda Helmy at [email protected].

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Specific Craft Talks and Lunch & Learns

Saturday Lunch & Learn with Carmen Maria Machado

Join us for lunch with bestselling author Carmen Maria Machado. Bring your appetite and your questions!

Sunday Lunch & Learn with Visiting Agents and Editors

Our Sunday Lunch & Learn is all about the publishing side of writing. Bring your questions for industry professionals as we discuss best practices to put your best foot forward.

Crafting Authentic Dialogue for Teens and Tweens with Jake Maia Arrow

In this lecture, we will engage in close-reading and discussion of dialogue through examples from children’s novels, plays, and conversations “in the wild” to understand its importance in prose and stories for young readers (and the young at heart).

Plot, Pulse, Story: Discovery-Based Writing with Ashley Hope Pérez

Ready for some strategies that take the plodding out of plotting? This session is aimed towards fiction and nonfiction writers of all levels and focuses on playful strategies for discovering what’s next in our stories and writing from the heart of that discovery. We all crave that thrilling moment when our story comes alive and the writing seems to unfold naturally. But we all also know times when we’re just going through the motions, painfully slogging through a plot that feels forced rather than fresh. This class is all about strategies that take the plodding out of plotting. We’ll focus on discovering what’s next in our stories and writing from the heart of that discovery. Our writing is best when the story we’re telling feels urgent, fresh, and surprising—to us, as well as our readers.

Be/Longing: Generative Poetry Seminar with Safia Elhillo

In this generative writing seminar for writers of all experience levels, participants will encounter poems exploring themes of belonging, interspersed with micro-prompts to reflect on their own communities and place in the world, culminating in the prompt to write a poem about their own belonging—the shapes and textures of it, the memories, the collaboration it requires.

Group Wrap Up Session

Loft teaching artist Rachel Werner will help you synthesize and build on the craft seminars and lunch and learns from the Lit!Series weekend.