Hampton Roads Writers, Inc. (HRW), a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating opportunities for writers to achieve publication success, will host its fifth annual conference in Virginia Beach, September 19-21, 2013, at the Westin Town Center hotel.  The multi-day conference will provide opportunities for attendees to hone their writing craft, pitch their book manuscripts to New York literary agents actively seeking clients, and network with...

INTRODUCING the 4 Keys to a Killer Book Cover Design—a free webinar! Your book cover is often the most powerful and sometimes the best marketing tool to help grab attention at bookstores and online. So you want to make sure you know the keys to designing a great cover. In this free webinar, hosted by Archway Publishing, Jason Heuer, Assistant Art Director at Simon & Schuster will reveal the keys to creating eye-catching covers for fiction...

Two Publishing Pros to Offer Fiction Writing Bootcamp May 3-5 in Santa BarbaraTwo literary insiders team up to help budding authors craft novels that will catch the eye of agents and publishers. Shelly Lowenkopf and Toni Lopopolo began the bootcamps in 2010 in the Santa Barbara/Ventura area. The latest edition is “Bare Knuckles Bootcamp” which brings their accumulated knowledge and street creds as Executive Editors with Macmillan,...

There’s been a real boom in the popularity of creative writing weekends over the last few years. There are some who say writers retreats are a waste of time, pandering to writers’ fragile egos and encouraging people to believe they have writing talents which they, frankly, lack. But on the other hand, many writers really enjoy them and swear that a weekend away with other writers is a positive part of the creative process.  The...

While the traditional view of formal poetry includes a very strict rhyme scheme that must be adhered to, the free verse style popularized by the great Ezra Pound largely eschews rhyme schemes altogether, instead relying on the power of the words themselves to paint a vivid portrait of the poet’s feelings. Free verse has become so widely accepted by publishers of modern poetry, in fact, that some won’t even entertain submissions of formal...

The third annual Ojai WordFest will host “A Celebration of Words” at Libbey Bowl on Saturday, April 13th. The event will be the highlight to the 8-day Ojai WordFest, which runs Saturday April 6 through Saturday April 13. Scheduled festivities will include stage readings and performances by authors, poets, playwrights, songwriters, and other word-artists. A “Book Fair at the Bowl” will be held on the lawn above the bowl...