Day 5: A Fist Full of Firsts

Welcome!

You may have noticed that another writer has joined our table. Meet Marsha Moore; she lives in London, England and blogs at Write On!. Today, we are helping Marsh celebrate. The mayor of London endorsed her book, 24 Hours: London. [Clink of wine glasses…] Congratulations, Marsha! Link to her blog to read the story.

We are also celebrating another first for Calling All Aspiring Writers with Marsha. She has agreed to write a monthly piece for our site. Beginning on October 15^th, Marsha will write on travel books. Her travel book about London is coming out in October and she working on one about Paris. Marsha is our first 897 Regular.

Another "first" for our community is a featured conference. The column on the right shows a fall writers' conference. Escape to Create is a non-profit organization that hosts a January artist-in-residence program in Seaside, Florida. This year, they have expanded their mission to host their first annual writers' conference to be held Oct. 14-16, 2009. This is a boutique conference that accommodates a maximum of 40 people. The award-winning visiting authors will have sessions on memoir writing, the profession of writing, and non-fiction writing that could be of interest to non-fiction writers.

The sessions are small and held in a private residence, so many opportunities exist for one-on-one time with the presenters. Please note that if you are unable to climb stairs, this would not be the conference for you. The sessions are held on the second floor of the home. If you are interested you can contact Mrs. Melayne DeMars at escapetocreate@gmail.com.

Finally, I have posted the first links to organizations that educate writers. The Christian Writers' Guild works toward the goal of giving students the tools necessary to keep them from the many missteps and pitfalls that can stall a writer's career. It is the one with which I am most familiar. I have just started their two-year apprentice program. I will start blogging about that next month.

The second one is The Creative Nonfiction Foundation. Quoting from their web site, the Creative Nonfiction Foundation "pursues educational and publishing initiatives in the genre of literary nonfiction. Its objectives are to provide a venue, the journal Creative Nonfiction, for high quality nonfiction prose (memoir, literary journalism, personal essay); to serve as the singular strongest voice of the genre, defining the ethics and parameters of the field; and to broaden the genre's impact in the literary arena by providing an array of educational services and publishing activities." They have contests that may also be of interest.

That's our fist full of firsts for our blog. Let me know if you find them useful.