At the Union Grove Distillery in Arkville, NY on April 24, 2016
© 2016 Simona David
At “Meet the Authors” – Third Annual Catskills Book Festival
Tag: The Catskills
“Meet the Authors” – Third Annual Catskills Book Festival, Sunday, April 24 at Union Grove Distillery
Writers in the Mountains (WIM) invites you to a literary arts and community event and celebration we call “Meet the Authors,” the third in our series of annual book festivals. This year the event takes place on Sunday, April 24, from 12 noon to 4 p.m. at the Union Grove Distillery in Arkville, NY, an exciting new enterprise in the area. Union Grove is housed in a big old barnlike building featuring comfortable spaces fitted with stainless steel and copper and wood, a roaring fireplace, and the percolation of fine spirits—all making for a perfect environment in which to listen to, talk about, and think about books and writing.
The daylong event welcomes all writers and readers, artists and audience, and community members from every walk to brave the mud and chill of early spring and enjoy a warm gathering of successful and fascinating writers, illustrators, editors, educators, booksellers, and publishers from Syracuse to New York City and points between and beyond. This year’s keynote speaker is Rosie Schaap, author of the celebrated memoir Drinking with Men as well as the “Drink” column for The New York Times magazine.
Come by to shop for books directly from their authors, hear readings and peer-to-peer discussions, join in an enticing raffle (books are the prize, of course), and vote in the Best Book Cover contest.
Participating authors include Sari Botton, Robert Burke Warren, Linda Lowen, Ginnah Howard, John Gregg, Susan Wilbur, Craig Sanders, Jo Salas, Nava Atlas, Mary Lou Harris, and poet Danniel Schoonebeek, among others.
The program is as follows:
12:30—Poetry reading led by poet Sharon Israel. Featured Poet: Danniel Schoonebeek.
Danniel Schoonebeek’s first book of poems, American Barricade, was published by YesYes Books in 2014. It was named one of the year’s ten standout debuts by Poets & Writers and called “a groundbreaking first book that stands to influence its author’s generation” by Boston Review. In 2015, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and his second book of poems, Trébuchet, was selected as a winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series and will be published by University of Georgia Press. Recent work appears in The New Yorker, Poetry, Kenyon Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. A recipient of awards and honors from Poets House, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and Oregon State University, he hosts the Hatchet Job reading series in Brooklyn and edits the PEN Poetry Series. His latest book, a travelogue called C’est la guerre, is forthcoming later this year.
1:30—Group discussion on the latest news and trends in publishing. Leslie T. Sharpe, who taught writing at Columbia University and was an editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and now teaches for Writers in the Mountains, will talk about traditional publishing; writer and consultant Simona David will touch on independent publishing; poet, painter and educator Anique Taylor will address getting published in literary journals; and Lillian Browne, editor-in-chief of The Reporter and editor of the Catskill Country Magazine, will share thoughts about her experience with the news media and travel magazine publishing.
2 p.m.—Rosie Schaap, author of the celebrated memoir Drinking with Men as well as the “Drink” column for The New York Times magazine, will deliver the keynote address. Rosie Schaap has been a bartender, a fortuneteller, a librarian at a paranormal society, an English teacher, an editor, a preacher, a community organizer, and a manager of homeless shelters.
2:30—Carrie Bradley Neves, writer, musician, and editor (with a specialization in cookbooks) will talk about new ingredients in the cookbook scene during the “foodie” era. Other illustrated book authors will be in the spotlight.
3:30—The Bounty of Books raffle, with a prize of ten selected book titles, will be awarded (come early, tickets are limited!), and the winner of the Best Cover contest will be announced.
Throughout the day, participating authors will read from their works and share their stories with the audience. Admission is free. For more information, visit writersinthemountains.org, or e-mail writersinthemountains@gmail.com.
Writers in the Mountains is a 501 (c) (3) not-for–profit organization with a mission to provide a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation, and sharing of creative writing.
Impressions from the Woodstock Writers Festival
Woodstock Writers Festival just concluded its seventh season earlier this month: the festival took place between April 7 – 10 at various locations throughout town, and brought in writers of the highest caliber, as it does every year. This year the festival was co-sponsored by The New School, which also ran a Twitter contest throughout the duration of the festival, and asked participants to tweet their best Six Word Memoir, using the hashtag #6wordmemoir. Winners were offered the opportunity to be published on The New School’s Creative Writing program blog. Luis Jaramillo, the program’s director and author of The Doctor’s Wife, published in 2012, spoke at the festival. Jaramillo, who attended the festival for the first time this year, talked about The New School’s mission to “educate the educated.”
Read full article at Upstater.com.
© 2016 Simona David
$500 Million Economic Development Award to the Southern Tier
On December 10, 2015 the Governor’s Office announced the winners of the Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI) awards in the amount of $1.5 billion. The Southern Tier was one of the three winning regions, along with the Finger Lakes and Central New York regions. Each region was awarded $500 million to spend on economic development projects over the next five years.
I spoke with Dr. Harvey Stenger, President of Binghamton University, and Co-Chair of the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council.
Simona David: Dr. Stenger, please talk a little bit about the Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council: when was it formed, what is its mission, and its structure? In 2011 Governor Andrew Cuomo created ten regional economic development councils as an effort to improve New York’s business climate and expand economic growth.
Dr. Harvey Stenger: The council and the process for economic development initiative that the Governor has driven started right after he took office. We’re on our fifth year now of being part of this, entering the sixth year in 2016. The process that he developed is a competitive process: we’re ten regions that the state has been divided in to compete annually for funds to do capital projects that can have synergistic and large impacts on the local economies. The Southern Tier is made up of eight counties centered around Broome County but going as far to the West as Steuben, as far to the East as Delaware. A very diverse group of about 600,000 people. The process is that each year we come up with projects. We also have a strategic plan that talks about things that we want to do over a very long period of time rather than just projects. So, when the Governor picks winners each year he looks at their plans, as well as specific projects that they have. This year, as you know, he upped the competition so that the winners competed for $500 million compared to $30 – 40 million per year in the past years.
SD: What is the Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) program, and how does it relate to the Upstate Revitalization Initiative (URI)?
HS: That’s a good question. It got confusing this year. In the past there was only the Consolidated Funding Application where any person or agency or company or municipality could go to the Regional Economic Development Council’s website, and enter a project, the project description, its schedule, and its impact, and how would fit into the region’s plan. That was the process that everyone was familiar with for the last four years. And those funds were typically between $100,000 and $2 – 3 million. Many of them were funded directly through the Empire State Development Agency (ESD), but some of them were funded through other agencies like the Energy, Research and Development Authority, or the Power Authority, or the Department of Transportation, or the Department of Labor. That’s the past. Then this year they mixed together the projects that are called Upstate Revitalization projects and the Consolidated Funding Application projects, but there was a lot of overlapping. The most recent booklet that the Governor’s Office has put out actually divides them up. It shows the Consolidated Funding Application (CFA) awards, and then it shows the Upstate Revitalization awards separately. So you can actually see the difference in this booklet that’s online which projects were considered CFA awards, and which projects were considered Upstate Revitalization Initiative. We’re going to have a Council Executive Committee meeting maybe the second week of January, and try to move as many projects forward as we can, as quickly as we can. We know that time is money, and we want these projects to get started as soon as possible.
SD: So, your mandate was to prepare a Revitalization Plan for the region’s eight counties. The Southern Tier is formed by Broome, Chemung, Chenango, Delaware, Schuyler, Steuben, Tioga, and Tompkins counties. Let’s talk about the process of preparing the Revitalization Plan for the Southern Tier. The State Implementation Assessment Team (SIAT) outlined a number of plan concepts: innovation, leveraging the private sector, investment, connectivity and collaboration, sustainability, workforce development, community reinvestment, global economy, readiness, leveraging other state initiatives. Let’s talk about the process, and also about the team who prepared this plan.
HS: The advantage we had in preparing this new plan was that we had an existing plan that was in really good shape. The plan that we submit every year as part of the awards process has to have in it things that you just listed: from workforce development to the Opportunity Agenda to hard-to-place workers to manufacturing industries. We already had targeted and talked about those things in previous plans. So, it was easy for us to adapt the 2014 Plan to write the 2015 Plan, which is more extensive. But the best part is that we can now think much bigger. We can think in longer terms. In the past we had to think about year by year one set of awards, one set of projects. This new proposal could talk about more than 100 projects that could take place over five years. And now we can start to build synergies between the projects, so that they have multiplier effect. We have a great team that goes out and talks to companies, talks to municipalities, finds out what their needs really are, tries to make sure that the descriptions of their needs are accurate so that when we put our proposal together we know if we’re promising a project that will deliver 100 jobs, and it’s a $2 million investment. So, it’s a lot of foot work, and travel, and conversations that our staff is going through – the staff from ESD, the staff from all the agencies that we work with. We do have some very skilled writers, and I do think that our plan was attractive, and easy to read, and it had a lot of good features. We’re competing against some big cities, we’re competing against Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, all much larger than us, with more resources than us. It’s exciting that we had a good enough plan to be in the top three.
SD: Actually this was one of my questions: What do you think made the Southern Tier’s application so strong? Maybe we can connect this to talking a little bit about some of the projects listed in the Revitalization Plan, and how the priorities were set.
HS: One of the things that we recognized in our data analysis leading up to writing up this most recent version of our URI plan, is that we have a very high concentration of industries surrounding transportation equipment, and these would include companies like Alstom which is in Hornell that makes the trains for Amtrak; BAE in Broome County manufactures avionic systems for aircrafts; Raymond Corporation in Greene, NY makes lift trucks; and, Lockheed Martin makes helicopters. When you look at all those industries you find out that they’re all in the same industry code, and when you look at their density you find that they’re extremely dense in the Southern Tier compared to other parts of the country. What can we do that synergistically can pull them together? A part of our plan – the Advanced Manufacturing Initiative – addresses that specifically to help companies in our region improve cybersecurity.
Another initiative is agriculture. Even though we have an area that’s fairly low in produce development, we have great diary, great beef, poultry, pork, but we’re limited in many ways by a good distribution system. We don’t have a lot of superhighways, we have certain corridors, but a lot of our farms are mixed up in areas where distribution and transportation are difficult. How can we pull together all these distant farms, and find good distribution hubs for them? This is another project that we think will have a pretty large impact on farming and the rural communities, which is a big part of the Southern Tier.
SD: There is also the Greater Binghamton Innovation Ecosystem Initiative – you plan to create several iDistricts (i stands for innovation), including a high-technology incubator and a biopharmaceutical hub in the Binghamton area. The fourth initiative – Promoting the Southern Tier’s Innovative Culture Initiative – is very interesting as well: it seems that you plan to develop a regional brand for the Southern Tier. Let’s talk about this fourth initiative a little bit.
HS: The way I put it to people is that you want to have a great place to work, but also a cool place to live. When I look at what this area probably was 30 – 50 years ago, it was a great place to work and a cool place to live. There were factories in Endicott and Johnson City – IBM in Endicott, the Endicott-Johnson shoe company in Johnson City, and then people ended up in Binghamton in the evening for dinner, or for a play, or for an opera, or a baseball game, or a hockey game, and that’s what we were. We were also a very innovative society. This is where IBM started. We have this history of being very creative and innovative, and having a very good blend of industrial locations and cooler urban centers. But they’ve gone away. In the last 25 years we’ve lost probably ¾ of the manufacturing jobs in this region. These are high-paying jobs, and when they’ve gone away, all those things that were there to help support and provide services for them have gone away. Our job now is to find the bones of what’s left and to inject certain funds into the region to seed and to catalyze the re-growth of those. For example the iDistrict in Johnson City is going to focus on bringing pharmaceutical companies to the Southern Tier. The other area that we’re trying to enhance is the Endicott area where we still have great equipment that can process electronic materials but in a much higher tech way. Downtown Binghamton doesn’t need too much, but we are going to invest some of our funds in high density development trying to create an urban living environment in downtown Binghamton – a lot of student housing there, but we’re looking at more professional housing, and to take advantage of the waterfronts that are in Binghamton, to take advantage of the night life, and try to do some transformative projects.
SD: A couple of questions about Delaware County specifically. I believe Delaware County is the only Catskills county to benefit from the URI awards, just because it belongs to the Southern Tier, one of the three winners, the other two being Finger Lakes region, and Central New York region. First, are there any specific projects to be developed in Delaware County? Second, when we’re talking about developing a Southern Tier regional brand – here in the Catskills we’ve been talking about promoting the Catskills as a region – how will this impact Delaware County?
HS: I think it’s unfortunate that we don’t get Sullivan County too. But Delaware is a beautiful county, along the east branch of Delaware River; the fishing streams in there are historic, and some of the resorts that are in Delaware County are outstanding. Two of the projects that are going to be funded right away are in Delaware County. One is part of The Roxbury Motel that’s certainly a destination. They’re going to rehabilitate about 5,700 sq ft of the federal mansion into guest rooms; we’re going to provide about 20 percent of the funding for that. The second one is an infrastructure project in the village of Walton. This will update their waste treatment facility to make it more efficient, and to have an anaerobic digester that will create biogas that can actually be burned to generate electricity. Peg Ellsworth, who is Delaware County’s representative, certainly has lots of great ideas, great projects. We’re looking at some of the things that we can brand. One of the things we’re trying to do is attract people from New York City, and bring them into the Southern Tier for culture and tourism events, but also to bring their companies here, and maybe move from New York City to a lower cost Southern Tier facility. We can have Delaware County be the gate to the Southern Tier. Delaware County is a great asset that we have.
SD: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
HS: I do think there are still a lot of details that are developing, people are still wondering about all of the impacts, and all the different projects. The Regional Council will be meeting in January. There will be public meetings; people are encouraged to come and give us their comments and thoughts. It’s great to have a Governor who appreciates the upstate revitalization process, and the legislative support that’s going to be necessary to make these investments, and make sure they are successful.
SD: Are you still considering new projects?
HS: Most definitely. We have several projects that aren’t completely developed. We will be working with certain agencies to put more details into those plans, and you’ll be seeing more of the Regional Economic Development Council in the Southern Tier asking people for their ideas, and for their projects. We’ll be constantly evolving.
SD: How do you plan to communicate the status of these projects, and let people know about the progress that’s being made?
HS: We’re pretty good at keeping our website updated at http://regionalcouncils.ny.gov/cohttps://regionalcouncils.ny.gov/southern-tierntent/southern-tier. In there you’ll see our updated plan from last year, you’ll see our video from last year that talks about dozens of projects across the Southern Tier and the status of these projects. You’ll also be able to find our presentation of our future proposal and our URI proposal – there’s a video as well as a document of that. Every project that gets funded is reviewed, and we count jobs, and cost-sharing, and all that can be found on that public site as well.
Creative Writing Workshops in the Catskills
Writers in the Mountains has announced its 2016 creative writing workshops. In addition to established poetry, playwriting, fiction and creative non-fiction classes, in 2016 the organization will introduce three new offerings:
- Durga Yael Bernhard will be teaching an Illustration workshop at the Phoenicia Library from June 4 to July 9, 2016. This workshop will be covering style development, visual research, and design. The business aspects of professional illustration will also be covered, including freelancing, contracts, self-promotion, and more.
- Also at the Phoenicia Library, Dara Lurie will be teaching a Business Writing workshop tailored to small business owners who wish to create catchy marketing copy. The class will incorporate one-to-one content development sessions. It will be held from August 11 to September 15, 2016.
- New York Times best-selling author Sari Botton will be teaching a memoir workshop called “First-Person Singular” at a location to be determined in the city of Kingston. All levels are welcome in this class, which will be covering anything from short stories and essays to long form narratives.
For more information, and to sign up visit writersinthemountains.org.
Writers in the Mountains at the Andes Roundtable
Writers in the Mountains (WIM) invites you to the Andes Roundtable, Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 7 pm. The event is held at the Hunting Tavern, on Main Street in Andes, NY. Attendees will learn about WIM’s mission and programs, hear some of the region’s best writers, and have a conversation about the role of arts and letters in the Catskill region.
Writers in the Mountains (WIM) is a literary organization founded twenty-three years ago in Roxbury. Over the past two decades the organization has grown to include more than three hundred writers from all backgrounds, all ages and levels of experience, writing in all genres and styles. WIM offers a variety of creative writing workshops year round throughout the entire Catskill region: fiction, poetry, memoir, playwriting, publishing, business writing, illustration, and more.
In addition to a broad range of workshops and seminars, in 2012 WIM launched an essay contest for middle and high school students in Delaware County. The essay contest encourages young writers to pursue their passion and dare to write – WIM’s motto. This year’s topic is What is your favorite music, and how does it move you?
Additionally, in 2014 WIM ventured into yet another arena: in April 2014 WIM started a book festival for authors, publishers and booksellers in the Catskills and Hudson Valley area. In 2015 the keynote speaker was award-winning author Jenny Milchman, published by Ballantine / Penguin Random House.
Writers in the Mountains hosts The Writer’s Voice, a weekly radio program on WIOX, broadcast Tuesdays at 1 pm, and produced by poet Sharon Israel.
WIM Board of Directors includes professionals with a wide range of skills and expertise: Simona David (consultant), Sharon Israel (poet), Geoff Rogers (writer), Peg DiBenedetto (publisher), Leslie T. Sharpe (professor, author and consultant), Lillian Browne (journalist), Carrie Bradley Neves (editor), Elizabeth Sherr (professor) – all professionals with a strong vision for what the organization is and can be.
Writers in the Mountains is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization with a mission to provide to the general public a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation, and sharing of creative writing. For more information, visit writersinthemountains.org.
Nonfiction Book Proposal Workshop
Writers in the Mountains (WIM) announces Selling Your Nonfiction Book: The Art of Proposal Writing, a Sunday seminar with Leslie T. Sharpe, June 7, 1 to 4 pm, at the Andes Public Library. In three information-packed hours, Leslie will effectively detail what it takes to write a winning nonfiction book proposal, illustrated with several handouts. In the second half of the seminar, she will invite writers to present their projects for evaluation and input in order to best shape their own top-notch “winning” proposal.
In addition to its diversity of forms, nonfiction also offers writers (which literary fiction does not) the possibility of having an incomplete manuscript accepted by an agent or editor— accompanied by a strong proposal. The proposal—including elements such as an Overview of the book, Annotated Table of Contents, Author’s Platform and Market Analysis—is usually submitted with two or three chapters of text and is, first and foremost, a writing sample as well as a sales tool. What agents/editors look for in a proposal is strong writing with a clear and cogent presentation of the book’s subject and/or narrative arc, depending on the form, and a persuasive rationale forwhy the book should be published, and why the author is the best possible person to write it.
Leslie, author, editor and educator, was a regular contributor to New York Newsday’s “Urban ‘I’” column. Her essays and articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, International Herald Tribune, Newsday, New York Times, Psychology Today, and The Village Voice, among many others. Leslie recently finished her memoir, Our Fractured, Perfect Selves, and is currently at work on The Quarry Fox and Other Tales of a Catskill Summer. Wearing her editor hat, Leslie wrote Editing Fact and Fiction: A Concise Guide to Book Editing (Cambridge University Press, 1994), a “modern editing classic”and “On Writing Smart: Tips and Tidbits,” featured in The Business of Writing (Allworth, 2012). Now an editorial consultant, Leslie specializes in literary nonfiction and fiction and poetry. At Columbia University, Leslie was Adjunct Assoc. Professor of Writing and taught in the MFA writing programs. She taught in City College’s Publishing Certificate Program, and in NYU’s Certificate Program in Book Publishing. Now, Leslie teaches online courses for the cutting-edge all-media website, mediabistro.com—The Nonfiction Book and Nonfiction Writing Master Class.
To register, call Jean Stone at (607) 326-4802, or e-mail her at jtstone@catskill.net. To register online, visit writersinthemountains.org, go to Register Online page, and fill in the registration form.Class fee is $35.
Writers in the Mountains is a 501 ( c ) (3) not-for-profit organization with a mission to provide to the general public a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation and sharing of creative writing.
Literary vs. Genre Fiction
This past Sunday Writers in the Mountains in partnership with Glaring Omissions Writing Group co-hosted a panel discussion Writing Fiction Today – Literary vs. Genre Fiction: Real Distinction or No Difference at All? at the Golden Notebook bookstore in Woodstock.
The panel discussion was moderated by Jenny Milchman. Jenny’s debut novel, Cover of Snow, earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, as well as praise from the New York Times, San Francisco Journal of Books, the AP, and other publications. It was an Indie Next and Target pick, won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for best suspense novel, and was nominated for the Macavity and Barry Awards for best first novel. Her second book Ruin Falls, also an Indie Next Pick, was published in 2014 to starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal, and chosen as a “10 Best of 2014” by Suspense Magazine. Jenny’s third novel, As Night Falls, will be published on June 30th, 2015.
Before I summarize the panelists’ remarks, allow me to make a few general considerations. Right before the panel discussion started, I googled literary vs. genre fiction. And the fastest answers I got were:
- Literary is about explaining the world;
- Genre is about escaping the world.
Also:
- Literary fiction takes the awards (there are exceptions to this rule, as we shall see!);
- Genre fiction makes the bestseller lists – it gets the money!
And:
- Literary fiction is more about advancing the intellectual discourse;
- Whereas genre fiction is more about playing with emotions.
Last November Joshua Rothman from The New Yorker wrote A Better Way to Think About the Genre Debate (you can find full article here). Rothman pointed out that contrary to the general belief that genre fiction doesn’t get nominated or receive literary awards, Station Eleven, a dystopian novel by Emily St. John Mandel, made it in fact among the fiction finalists for the National Book Awards last year. Rothman also pointed out that novels such as Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment are both literary and genre fiction.
Now going back to last Sunday’s panel, here is what the panelists had to say.
Alison Gaylin
“I just like to write a good story. Booksellers find the distinction helpful to know where to shelve a book. And also publishers find it helpful to know how to market the book. There are many genres: romance, thriller, sci-fi, etc.”
Gaylin, a USA Today and international best-selling author, received an Edgar nomination for her first book Hide Your Eyes. Her Shamus Award-winning novel, And She Was, was also nominated for the RT award, the Thriller and Anthony awards. In addition to her six published crime fiction novels, she’s published the Young Adult mystery Reality Ends Here (Simon and Schuster/PocketStar). Stay with Me, her eighth book – and the third in the acclaimed Brenna Spector series – was just nominated for an Edgar Award for best paperback.
Elizabeth Brundage
“I agree with Alison that bookstore owners need to know where to put the book, but it could backfire in a way. I like to call my books literary thrillers. Because I put a lot of effort in every sentence that I write. I think it’s mostly the way the books are marketed that had created this distinction. My last book Stranger Like You was marketed as a thriller, as opposed to my first two which were marketed more like general literary fiction. Stranger Like You sort of got lost, and people couldn’t find it. The distinction is not what motivates me to write; I just want to tell a good story. And I think what people like is some sort of driving narrative focus. The effort you put into character development is what makes a novel more literary – the voice of the characters and things like that.
Write a book that conveys your vision of the world.”
Brundage holds an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a James Michener Award. Before attending Iowa, she was a screenwriting fellow at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Her short fiction has been published in the Greensboro Review, Witness, and New Letters. She is the author of three novels, Somebody Else’s Daughter, The Doctor’s Wife, and A Stranger Like You, all published by Viking. Her new novel, All Things Cease to Appear, is forthcoming from Knopf in 2016.
Peter Golden
“I think this distinction became a problem for bookstores after WWII. It’s a post-war problem. Writers wrote for markets. But in the 1950s, early 1960s writers began to go to universities, and write for tenure. That was a different novel than writing for the markets. They needed different reviewers saying good things about their books. And then what happened was that people in the academia became very resentful of people in the marketplace, and vice versa. Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises because he wanted to become a commercial writer; he didn’t think he could make it by just writing short stories.”
Golden is an award-winning journalist and the author of six full-length works of non-fiction and fiction. His first novel, Comeback Love, was published by Simon & Schuster. Some of his work has appeared in the Detroit Free Press Magazine, Albany Times Union, New Jersey Monthly, Microsoft’s eDirections, Beyond Computing, Electronic Business, Midstream, The Forward, and Capital Region Magazine.
Going back to Jenny Milchman, a couple of days prior to this panel discussion, she started a Facebook thread, and engaged with fellow writers in a passionate, well-argued debate. One commenter remarked that good writing is good writing, and bad writing is just that – bad writing. Another one said that he thought at literary fiction more in terms of general fiction, whereas genre fiction is a clearly recognizable genre (or maybe even a niche genre, I would add). Yet another one added that it’s become fashionable to label almost anything outside of the genre fiction as literary, and that makes the label meaningless. One commenter discussed the dichotomy ideas vs. emotions: ideas as pursued in literary fiction by those intellectually oriented, and emotions as explored in genre fiction for readers looking to have an emotional experience. Someone else summed up that this is an overrated question, and that readers don’t understand or care about.
What are your thoughts about literary vs. genre fiction?
Writing Fiction Today: Literary vs. Genre Fiction
Writers in the Mountains (WIM) invites you to Writing Fiction Today – Literary vs. Genre Fiction: Real Distinction or No Difference at All? Sunday, May 3 at 1 p.m. at the Golden Notebook Bookstore, 29 Tinker Street, Woodstock, NY. The event is co-sponsored by Glaring Omissions Writing Group, one of the longest-running critique groups in the Hudson Valley.
What kind of book do you like to read? What form does your writing take? If you’re like most readers or authors or poets or scribes, an answer came to your mind right away. But what happens when we begin to poke at that answer? Is there such a thing as a literary mystery? Or an experimental novel with a secret at its heart? Can a poem mystify? Moderator Jenny Milchman leads a conversation with panelists Elizabeth Brundage, Alison Gaylin, and Peter Golden as they question the foundation that lies beneath bookstore shelving, library categorization, and the ways we define words on a page. If these divisions are arbitrary–or at least miss a great deal of what truly goes on in a work–then perhaps we can come up with something better. A meaning that helps us to identify and create what we all are really after… great writing.
Jenny Milchman’s debut novel, Cover of Snow, earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, as well as praise from the New York Times, San Francisco Journal of Books, the AP, and other publications. It was an Indie Next and Target pick, won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for best suspense novel, and was nominated for the Macavity and Barry Awards for best first novel. Her second book Ruin Falls, also an Indie Next Pick, was published in 2014 to starred reviews from Booklist and Library Journal, and chosen as a “10 Best of 2014″ by Suspense Magazine. Jenny’s third novel, As Night Falls, will be published on June 30th, 2015.
Elizabeth Brundage holds an MFA from the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a James Michener Award. Before attending Iowa, she was a screenwriting fellow at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Her short fiction has been published in the Greensboro Review, Witness, and New Letters. She is the author of three novels, Somebody Else’s Daughter, The Doctor’s Wife, and A Stranger Like You, all published by Viking. Her new novel, All Things Cease to Appear, is forthcoming from Knopf in 2016.
USA Today and international best-selling author Alison Gaylin received an Edgar nomination for her first bookHide Your Eyes. Her Shamus Award-winning novel, And She Was, was also nominated for the RT award, the Thriller and Anthony awards. In addition to her six published crime fiction novels, she’s published the Young Adult mystery Reality Ends Here (Simon and Schuster/PocketStar). Stay with Me, her eighth book – and the third in the acclaimed Brenna Spector series – was just nominated for an Edgar Award for best paperback.
Peter Golden is an award-winning journalist and the author of six full-length works of non-fiction and fiction. Peter Golden’s first novel, Comeback Love, was published by Simon & Schuster. Some of his work has appeared in the Detroit Free Press Magazine, Albany Times Union, New Jersey Monthly, Microsoft’s eDirections, Beyond Computing, Electronic Business, Midstream, The Forward, and Capital Region Magazine.
Please come peruse a brand new gallery of books set up by the Golden Notebook, share drinks and light refreshments, and become a part of this very stimulating conversation! The event is free and open to the public. Book buying is encouraged to support our community bookstore.
Writers in the Mountains is a 501 ( c ) (3) not-for-profit organization with a mission to provide to the general public a nurturing environment for the practice, appreciation and sharing of creative writing.
Glaring Omissions Writers Group hosts a monthly reading series at the Golden Notebook.
Meet the Authors – Second Annual Catskills Book Festival
Writers in the Mountains’ Meet the Authors – Second Annual Catskills Book Festival
Roxbury Arts Center
April 12, 2015
Simona David Consulting 