News

Applications open for Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference

By Lightning Reports, Published: December 26, 2023

Applications are now open to participate in the 2024 Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference, sponsored by the Transylvania County Library Foundation and Brevard College. The conference consists of four days of intensive creative writing workshops for select participants, led by renowned authors Dorianne Laux, Pam Houston and Jason Mott.

The conference will take place May 16-19 on the Brevard College campus and at the Transylvania County Library. Conference faculty will give free public readings of their work, giving Transylvania County residents an opportunity to interact with the notable authors and engage in meaningful conversation about writing.

The writing workshops will be divided into three genres: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Workshop acceptance is competitive, so applicants are encouraged to submit their best published or unpublished work for review through the conference’s website: lgrwc.org. Interested individuals can apply to two of the genre workshops but may only be selected for one. Applications will be accepted through Dec. 31, and accepted participants will be notified by February. Each workshop is intimate and limited to 12 participants. Some scholarships are available.

At the 2024 conference, Jason Mott will be leading the fiction workshops, Pam Houston will lead non-fiction, and Dorianne Laux will lead the poetry workshops. Mott is a bestselling author, National Book Award Winner, and Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction Winner. His poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary journals, and he is the author of four novels: “The Returned,” “The Wonder of All Things,” “The Crossing,” and “Hell of a Book.” “Hell Of A Book,” was a Jenna Bush Hager “Read With Jenna” Book Club pick, Carnegie Medals For Excellence in Fiction Longlist selection, a 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize Longlist selection, a 2022 Chatauqua Prize Finalist, a Joyce Carol Oates Prize Longlist selection, the 2022 Housatonic Book Award Winner, the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Prize for Fiction winner, and the winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction.

Pam Houston is the author of two collections of short stories “Cowboys Are My Weakness,” which was the winner of the 1993 Western States Book Award and has been translated into nine languages, and “Waltzing the Cat,” which won the Willa Award for Contemporary Fiction; two novels, “Contents May Have Shifted” and “Sight Hound,” and three collections of autobiographical essays, “Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country,” from which Cheryl Strayed chose an essay for inclusion in the forthcoming “Best American Travel Writing” and another essay will be included in the forthcoming Pushcart Prize anthology, “A Rough Guide to the Heart,” and “A Little More About Me.” Her stories have also been selected for The O. Henry Awards and The Pushcart Prize. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, and The Evil Companions Literary Award. She is a regular contributor to O, the Oprah Magazine, the New York Times and many other periodicals. She divides her time between University of California Davis and southwestern Colorado at 9,000 feet above sea level near the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

Dorianne Laux is the author of several collections of poetry, including “What We Carry,” a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; “Smoke;” “Facts about the Moon,” chosen by the poet Ai as winner of the Oregon Book Award and also a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; “The Book of Men,” which was awarded the Paterson Prize; and “Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems,” Laux’s sixth collection, which was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and has been a Pushcart Prize winner. Her latest collection is “Life On Earth” which will be released in January of 2024. Laux has taught creative writing at the University of Oregon, Pacific University, and North Carolina State University; she has also led summer workshops at Esalen in Big Sur. She is the co-author, with Kim Addonizio, of “The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry.” She lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

For more information about the Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference, the application process and next year’s faculty, visit lgrwc.org.