West Virginia Writers' Workshop

West Virginia Writers’ Workshop Features All-Star Lineup

The 13th West Virginia Writers’ Workshop, to be held in the Mountainlair on the downtown campus of West Virginia University July 16-19, will feature writers who have won the Pen/Faulkner Award, the Pen/Revson Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, and other prestigious national and international prizes.

The writers will conduct workshops, present lectures, and give readings during the four-day event. Readings are free and open to the public.

The Workshop will kick off at 1 p.m. on July 16 with a reading by Renée Nicholson, a graduate of WVU’s MFA program. Nicholson, a former professional ballet dancer, has been published in the Gettysburg Review, Chelsea, and other literary magazines.

At 8 p.m. on July 16, Richard Wiley, the winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award for the novel Soldiers In Hiding, and Paula McLain, a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the author of the memoir Like Family: Growing Up in Other People’s Houses, will read.

On July 17, at 1:30 p.m., poet John Hoppenthaler, a professor at East Carolina University and the author of the poetry collection Lives of Water, and the fiction writer Natalie Sypolt, a graduate of WVU’s MFA program, will read.

At 8 p.m. on July 17, Mark Brazaitis, the author of The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala, winner of the 1998 Iowa Short Fiction Award and the director of WVU’s Creative Writing Program, and Shara McCallum, the winner of the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize for The Water Between Us, will read.

On July 18 at 1:30 p.m, Kevin Oderman, a WVU English professor and the author of the novel Going, and Kelly Moffett, a graduate of WVU’s MFA program and the author of the poetry collection Waiting for a Warm Body to Fill It, will read.

The Workshop will conclude at 8 p.m. on July 18 with readings by WVU Professor James Harms, the author of five collections of poetry and the winner of the PEN/Revson Fellowship, and Patricia Henley, whose first novel, Hummingbird House, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

The West Virginia Writers’ Workshop draws writers fron all over the country to Morgantown and the campus of WVU for four days of workshops, lectures, readings, and conversation about writing.

Contact: Mark Brazaitis, 304-293-9707

mark.brazaitis@mail.wvu.edu