RALEIGH — The 2014 Squire Summer Writing Residency will be July 10-13 on the campus of William Peace University in Raleigh. Registration is now open at www.ncwriters.org.
The residency offers an intensive course in a chosen genre (fiction, creative nonfiction or poetry), with 15 hours of workshop sessions over the four days of the program. Registrants work in-depth on their own writing, as well as their colleagues’, while also studying the principles of the genre with their instructor. Other features include faculty readings, panel discussions and open mic sessions for residents.
Former Piedmont Laureate Scott Huler will lead the track in creative nonfiction. He has written six books of creative nonfiction, most recently “On the Grid” (Rodale, 2010), about the infrastructure systems that make our world work. He has written about everything from the death penalty to bikini waxing, with his essays and reporting appearing in newspapers like the New York Times and in magazines like ESPN. He contributes writing and video regularly to Our State and Walter magazines.
Randall Kenan, a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will lead the fiction workshop. He is the author of a novel, “A Visitation of Spirits”; two works of nonfiction, and a collection of stories, “Let the Dead Bury Their Dead.” Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Writers’ Award, the North Carolina Award and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize.
Shelby Stephenson, who will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame in October, will lead the poetry workshop. He has published many collections of poems, plus the poetic documentary “Plankhouse” (with photos by Roger Manley). Shelby is the former editor of Pembroke Magazine.Stephenson’s latest collection, “The Hunger of Freedom” (2014), is from Red Dashboard.
Admission is limited to the first 50 registrants. And while workshops are at the heart of the conference programming, the weekend is a “residency” in the sense that attendees will enjoy meals together and have the option of staying overnight in on-campus accommodations. Free WiFi and parking are available.