Category: WilWrite26 Schedule

  • 10:30 – 11:30AM Saturday Zoom 1: Fund Your Muse: Applying for Grants, Fellowships, & Residencies

    Are you planning to apply for a literary grant, fellowship, scholarship, or artists’ residency in 2026 or 2027? This strategy-packed workshop will show you how to position yourself as a competitive candidate, demonstrate a rising trajectory, and craft clear, concise personal statements. You’ll also learn where to find legitimate funding opportunities, what selection committees look for, and complete hands-on activities to strengthen your application.

    • Lyzette Wanzer
      Lyzette Wanzer’s work appears in over thirty literary journals, magazines, and books. Her book, Trauma, Tresses, & Truth: Untangling Our Hair Through Personal Narratives (Chicago Review Press) appears on Library Journal’s 2022 Top 10 Best Social Sciences Books list, and was a 2023 Black Women’s Studies Association Selection. Lyzette is a contributor to The Lyric… Read more: Lyzette Wanzer

  • 10:30 – 11:30AM Saturday Windsor C: The Power of Picture Books

    Picture books are a critical part of children’s reading development and social and emotional learning. In this workshop, literary agent CoCo Freeman will show you how to create an engaging and memorable read aloud experience using sensory language and rich visual storytelling.

    Faculty

    • CoCo Freeman
      CoCo is a graduate of Bard College with a B.A. in Written Arts. Before joining Linda Chester, she worked for Tom Yoon Productions developing projects and editing existing material. She is very happy to have entered the world of her first love, books. Find out more at https://lindachester.com. Schedule

  • 10:30 – 11:30AM Saturday Windsor B: Adaptability: Bringing Books to the Screen

    Ever wonder how to squeeze 300 pages of a novel into a 100-page script? In this workshop with Randall Jahnson, you’ll learn how to turn books into compelling movies or series. You’ll explore how to assess a book’s cinematic potential, extract the real story, and shape it into a pitch and script that grabs the audience’s attention. We’ll tackle the tough questions: what to cut, what to keep, and when it’s okay to combine characters or add new material. You’ll leave with practical strategies and the confidence to adapt any novel or IP for the screen, with real-world examples from Randall’s scripts: The Doors, The Mask of Zorro, and Flashbacks.

    Faculty

    • Randall Jahnson
      Randall Jahnson has been a professional screenwriter since 1985. He’s worked with such amazing filmmaking talent as Stephen Spielberg, Penelope Spheeris, Spike Lee, and the late Jonathan Demme. His credits include the punk rock Western Dudes, The Doors, The Mask of Zorro, Sunset Strip, and episodes of the classic HBO comedy-horror series, Tales from the… Read more: Randall Jahnson

  • 10:30 – 11:30AM Saturday Belmont C: The Book Distribution Playbook: Visibility, Positioning, and Sales

    Getting your book published is one thing. Getting it sold is another. In this session, Keri-Rae Barnum, marketing strategist and CEO of New Shelves Books, breaks down publishing distribution and how books reach bookstore shelves, Amazon, and library systems. We’ll look at what makes a book commercially viable, how buying decisions happen, and the strategies that increase visibility and drive stronger sales.

    Faculty

    • Keri-Rae Barnum
      Keri-Rae Barnum has empowered hundreds of authors to launch and grow their writing careers with confidence and real-world results. She is the owner and CEO of New Shelves Books, where she partners with publishers and authors alike to strengthen production, distribution, and visibility in bookstores and libraries. She is also the author of Tough Love… Read more: Keri-Rae Barnum

  • 10:30 – 11:30AM Saturday Belmont B: Mining Darkness for Light: The Art of Humorous Memoir

    What makes humor strange and magical is that it is often rooted in sadness, anger, or shame. The writers we find funniest reveal deeply vulnerable truths while mining the absurd even from their darkest moments. In this workshop, we’ll cover ways to do this in your own writing, strategies to help you gain perspective, and the benefits of reframing your experiences—both to your writing and your life.

    Faculty

    • Courtenay Hameister
      Courtenay is an author, teacher, and the former host and head writer of the nationally-syndicated public radio show, Live Wire. Her first book, Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went From Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things was long-listed for the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Find out more at… Read more: Courtenay Hameister

  • 10:30 – 11:30AM Saturday Belmont A: Build to a Book Deal: Submit strategically

    In this workshop with Alle C. Hall, you’ll learn effective strategies for submitting journalism, essays and creative nonfiction, poetry, KidLit, short stories, and flash. You’ll gain practical tools to strengthen your submissions and target the right markets. Each step is designed to help you build a publishing history that attracts agents and editors to your query or book proposal.

    Faculty

    • Alle C. Hall
      Seattle author Alle C. Hall (pronounced AL-lee) is a veteran essayist and short-story writer (Dale Peck’s Evergreen Review, Tupelo Quarterly, The Seattle Times). Alle’s debut novel—As Far as You Can Go Before You Have to Come Back— earned 16 honors, including two #1 Kindle rankings and a nomination for The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Book Award.… Read more: Alle C. Hall

  • 10 – 10:30AM Saturday Belmont A/B & Zoom One: Break

    Time for some quick self-care! Grab a snack, stretch your legs, check in with friends, then get ready for your next amazing workshop!

  • 9AM – 9PM Saturday Zoom: Quiet Writing

    Writing at a writer conference? You bet! Bring that brilliant idea and get it on the page in a quiet space. The quiet room is open all day.

  • 9 – 10AM Saturday Zoom 2: Writing as Resistance: Crafting Work That Refuses to Be Silenced

    In a time of political suppression, censorship, and rising hostility toward the arts, your writing can become a vital act of resistance. In this workshop, you’ll learn practical craft strategies for embedding resistance into form, voice, and structure without relying on clichés or overt messaging. You’ll examine short excerpts from contemporary writers who confront systems of power, then generate new work through guided prompts designed for online engagement. You’ll leave with fresh material, sharper tools, and a clearer understanding of how your art can speak back.

    Faculty

    • Hillary Leftwich
      Hillary Leftwich is a multi-media writer and the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (Agape Editions, 2023), Aura (Future Tense Books, 2022), and Saint Dymphna’s Playbook (Limit Zero/University of Hell Press 2025). She teaches creative writing, business writing, environmental writing and environmental storytelling at several universities, writing organizations, and nonprofits… Read more: Hillary Leftwich

  • 9 – 10AM Saturday Zoom 1: Memoir as Fiction

    In this practical workshop, Laurie Scheer will show you how to thoughtfully transform real-life experiences into compelling fiction. You’ll learn how to identify which moments from your personal story are best suited for adaptation and how to reshape them to serve character, plot, and theme. You’ll leave with clear strategies for crafting a cohesive, engaging narrative based in your own experiences.

    Faculty

    • Laurie Scheer
      Laurie Scheer has worked with writers for decades. As a former vice president of programming for WE: Women’s Entertainment, Laurie analyzed manuscripts and scripts as they entered the competitive media marketplace. Laurie has been an instructor at numerous universities across the U.S. from Yale to UCLA. A seasoned professional speaker, she has appeared at annual… Read more: Laurie Scheer