Friday, June 26, 2009

SFF Writers Descend on Flagstaff

I live in a relatively small city that is generally out of the way of most things, with the closest major city being Phoenix. So, events relating to SFF are rare around here – I’m not like those bloggers who live in or near places like London and New York who get to attend lots of author events, major conventions, and publisher parties. Generally the best I can do is hit a signing in Phoenix if it corresponds with a business trip for me (though there aren’t too many SFF events in Phoenix either).

So, I was excited when my local newspaper had this article –
Sci-fi, fantasy writers descend on Flagstaff. This was news to me and had me curious. Basically, the ‘event’ is an invitation-only writing workshop called Starry Heaven. It’s the first time this workshop has happened and is modeled after a similar workshop in the Midwest called Blue Heaven.

I visited a meet the writers’ event at a local drinking establishment – I may have been the only person there not directly associated with the workshop. It was an interesting discussion and I hope this workshop becomes an annual event around here.

As for the authors – honestly, I wasn’t familiar with any of them. All are professionally published, but generally short stories (which I rarely have time to read). Maybe half have a novel or two published and it was a pretty varied group, ranging from concentrations on YA fantasy to hard science fiction. The authors who attended the workshop are
Sarah K. Castle, Greg Van Eekhout, Sarah Prineas, Sandra McDonald, D. Lynn Smith, William Shunn, E.C. Meyers, Brad Beaulieu, Jon Hansen, Rob Ziegler, Gary Shockley and Deb Coates.

So, this post is blatant promotion of an SFF event in my town and little else. But, I now have some new authors to check (if I can find time).

4 comments:

Mike said...

Sounds great. Here in Florida there are occasional events but things are spread out so thoroughly across the state that its difficult to find something convenient at times.

What did the authors talk about during the discussion?

Neth said...

one author moderated and five were a panel of sorts. The moderated asked each author a question - the question was earlier selected by the authors themselves. After that it was open to the audience - around half of which was also at the workshop and most of the others seemed to be a part of it.

Things discussed generally revolved around the craft of writing, the rigours of being a writer, how to get published, etc.

Sarah K Castle said...

Hello, thanks for blogging our event! For the record, nine people in the audience (besides yourself) had no association with the workshop. For a Flagstaff turnout, we were excited to have the audience outnumber the panel.

It was good to meet you and learn about your blog.

Neth said...

@Sarah

Thanks for the clarification. I look foward to doing it again next year.

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