Middle Tennessee State University‘s at-home creative writing mentorship program, MTSU Write, is inviting new and experienced authors to join the 2022 Fall Creative Writing Conference, set Friday and Saturday, Sept. 23-24.

This year’s conference, with a theme of “Truth or Dare: Writing Beyond the Boundaries of Form, Genre, Tough Topics and Taboo,” features online and in-person classes and presentations encouraging participants to edge out of their comfort zones.

It will be anchored by a Saturday lunchtime keynote talk from acclaimed writer Sequoia Nagamatsu, author of the national bestseller “How High We Go in the Dark” and the story collection “Where We Go When All We Were is Gone.”

MTSU Write Director Amie Whittemore, a lecturer in the university’s sponsoring Department of English and the 2020-21 poet laureate for the Murfreesboro Cultural Arts Laureate Program, is encouraging conference participants to register by Monday, Sept. 12, to ensure their places.

Registration is free for MTSU Write program students and mentors. Members of the public can attend all the 2022 conference sessions for $150 or register only for Friday’s virtual sessions for $75 or for Saturday’s in-person events, including lunch and the keynote address, for $125.  

Virtual programming begins at 10:30 a.m. Central on Friday, Sept. 23, with “Introduction to Publishing” with Missouri author, editor and publisher Allison Blevins, followed at noon by readings by graduating MTSU Write students.  

Beginning at 1:30, participants can choose from three virtual sessions: a repeat of Blevins’ publishing discussion; a talk on memoir writing, “Owning It: Boldly Telling Your Story,” with Florida writer Sheree L. Greer; and a special workshop, “Hand-Eye Coordination: Sketching and Drawing to Visualize and More Deeply Imagine Objects and Spaces,” with Nashville author and instructor Adria Bernardi.

The conference kicks off in person at 7 p.m. Central on Friday at Graffiti Alley in downtown Murfreesboro, 124 N. Church St., with a free public reading. That event, co-sponsored by Poetry in the Boro, will feature visiting writer Lynne Lampe, conference presenter and author Christian J. Collier and limited open-mic opportunities.

Saturday’s events will be held in-person from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in MTSU’s Academic Classroom Building, 1751 MTSU Blvd.  

Participants can attend 90-minute discussions on topics including plot development, connections in poetry and prose, revising your work, creating characters and more.  

Nagamatsu will present the MTSU Write conference keynote address beginning at the 12:15 p.m. conference lunch.  

He teaches creative writing at Minnesota’s Saint Olaf College and the Pacific Lutheran University Rainier Writing Workshop in Tacoma, Washington. His work has appeared in publications including Conjunctions, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, Tin House, Iowa Review and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories.

More information, including registration links and additional details on the conference speakers and presenters, is available at https://mtsu.edu/write/conference.php or by emailing mtsuwrite@mtsu.edu.

MTSU Write, part of the Department of English in the university’s College of Liberal Arts, is a three-semester writing program for new and experienced writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, screenwriting and playwriting, who work from home under the mentorship of professional authors of fiction, nonfiction or poetry.  

For more information about the program, visit https://mtsu.edu/write.

— Gina E. Fann (gina.fann@mtsu.edu)