Just Write

Catherine Sampson and Gwynne Scheffer attended the Rutgers-Camden hosted its 20^th annual Spring Writers’ Conference on April 12, 2008. It was a day of readings and workshops featuring poets, novelists and many other accomplished writers including Rutgers’ MFA faculty.

Some highlights from two sessions:

• Literary Magazine publisher, Painted Bride Quarterly, www.pbq.drexel.edu, is a 35 year old, not-for-profit publisher with two offices in Philadelphia (housed at Drexel) and New York (NYU). The co-editors, Kathleen Volk Miller & Marion Wrenn were both very entertaining as well as informative on the topic of publishing and literary portals.
• Creative Non-fiction with Jane Bernstein was a learning experience in critiquing writing.  Writers submitted work in advance of the conference which was distributed prior to the conference to the registrants to read in advance of the session. Jane gave an overview of creative non-fiction and some tips.  We were provided a few ground rules before the open critique of each writer's work.  It was amazing to listen as participants provided perspectives and input on the works of these aspiring authors.

This free conference was an extremely valuable experience and we would recommend it for writers at all levels.