Books-A-Million Presents the Writing Today Open Forum: Free Monthly Sessions Led By Local Authors, Editors & Journalists
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Writing Today presents its 2008-2009 “Writing Today Open Forum” starting on Tuesday, Sept. 9, with a talk titled “Writing Faith.” The presentation is the first of six free lectures in a third annual series sponsored by Writing Today, the writers’ conference held each March on the campus of Birmingham-Southern College. Intended for writers who want to learn the practice and principles of good writing, networking and publishing, the Open Forum is held on the second Tuesday of each month at 7 p.m., through February 2009, at the Colonial Brookwood Village location of Books-A-Million. The Open Forum is free and open to the public; for more information, call (205) 870-0213 or (205) 226-4921.
SEPT. 9 – “Writing Faith.”
Jennifer Horne & Wendy Reed - 7 p.m.
Jennifer Horne is the editor of Working the Dirt: An Anthology of Southern Poets (New South Books, 2003), a SEBA 2003 Poetry Book of the Year nominee. She is the poetry book review editor for First Draft, the journal of the Alabama Writers Forum, and she teaches in the Alabama Prison Arts and Education Project. Her poetry publications include a chapbook, Miss Betty’s School of Dance (bluestocking press, 1997), and poems in numerous journals, mostly Southern. She has earned an M.A. (English), an M.F.A. (Creative Writing), and an M.A. (Community Counseling-Gerontology) from the University of Alabama and has worked as a college, high school and elementary school teacher.
Wendy Reed (Bruce) is a doctoral student at The University of Alabama where she works at The Center for Public TV and Radio. She received the Lincoln Unity Award in Media, Public Affairs/Social Issues Reporting Category, for her documentary A Closer Look: The Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind and a fellowship from the Alabama State Council on the Arts for Literature. Her documentary “Mother’s Day” received the Audience Award and the Feature Film Judges’ Award at the San Diego Girl Film Festival for 2005. Her publications and/or awards also include New Letters, New Millennium Writing, Kaliope, Dogwood Writing Today, and George Mason University. She lives in Birmingham with her three children.
OCT. 14 – “Tips on Writing a Novel.”
Dr. Ibrahim (Abe) Fawal - 7 p.m.
Dr. Ibrahim (Abe) Fawal is a writer and filmmaker who taught film and literature at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Birmingham-Southern College. For two consecutive years, he was chairman of Writing Today. He served as “Jordanian” first assistant director on David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. Dr. Fawal holds an M.A. in Film from UCLA and a D.Phil from Oxford University. He is the author of On The Hills of God, a novel which won the prestigious 1998 PEN-Oakland Award for Excellence in Literature. In 2001 the British Film Institute published his book Youssef Chahineon the cinema of the internationally acclaimed Egyptian director and the recipient of the Cannes Film Festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
NOV. 11 – “Interviews: A Vital Part of Writing Narrative Non-fiction.” Ruth Cook - 7 p.m. Ruth Beaumont Cook is the author of two books published by Crane Hill. North Across the River (2000) is a story about cotton mill workers arrested by General Sherman during the Civil War. Guests Behind the Barbed Wire (2007) tells the story of the German prisoner of war camp in Aliceville, Alabama during WWII. During 2008, Guests was named a finalist in the Foreword Magazine book awards competition in history and won a Bronze Medal in history in the Outstanding Book Awards competition sponsored by Independent Publishers. Ruth Cook has written numerous articles for Birmingham magazine and other local and regional publications. She is a corporate training facilitator who specializes in business communication skills. She is a graduate of The Ohio State University and lives in Birmingham.
DEC. 9 – “The Adventures of Self-Publishing.”
Jerri Beck - 7 p.m.
Jerri Beck works with children and authors at Books-A-Million, Colonial Brookwood Village, Birmingham bookstore and volunteers as a docent at the Birmingham Zoo. She also volunteers with the Alabama Radio Reading Service (for the print impaired). An award-winning writer and editor during her 20 years at UAB, she continues to enjoy the magic words can create. Originally from Cherokee, North Carolina, she also presents programs to children about Native Americans. She is editor of and a writer included in Poems from the Big Table.
JAN. 13 – “Writing for Magazines.”
Julie Miller - 7 p.m.
Julie Cole Miller is a senior editor at Southern Accents magazine, a bi-monthly Southern Progress publication, devoted to beautiful homes, gracious living and a sense of place. She has written and edited stories on remodeling, historic preservation, fine artists and architecture of the South and writes a standing column on antiques called “Educated Eye. “A graduate of Auburn University with a degree in journalism, Julie joined Southern Accents in 1997.
FEB. 10 – “Where There’s a Quill, There’s a Way: Writing on a Weekly Deadline”- Glenny Brock, Courtney Haden, Kyle Whitmire - 7 p.m.
Birmingham Weekly columnists Courtney Haden and Kyle Whitmire, along with editor Glenny Brock, reveal the mysteries of what it takes to make it as prose pros. Courtney Haden is a veteran of broadcast radio and a Birmingham native; he has published thousands of columns in dozens of newspapers and magazines. Kyle Whitmire is a native of Thomasville, Ala., and a stringer for the New York Times. In 2008, he won a first place award for political commentary from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. Glenny Brock earned her B.A. at Birmingham-Southern College and harmful in creative writing from Spalding University in Louisville, Ky. She has been the editor of Birmingham Weekly since 2002.
The 29th annual Writing Today conference will be held on March 13 & 14, 2009 at Birmingham-Southern College. The two-day conference is the home of the Hackney Literary Awards and features a lineup of nationally and internationally known poets, playwrights, fiction authors, journalists, scholars and other professionals from the publishing industry. Previous Writing Today Grand Masters have included John Barth, Erskine Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Ray Bradbury, Gwendolyn Brooks, Gay Talese and Walter Mosley, among others. Learn more online at www.writingtoday.org. For more information about Writing Today, call (205) 226-4921.