Schedule, Northwestern Summer Writers' Conference - Northwestern School of Professional Studies

Workshop Descriptions

Saturday, August 2, 2025

The Art of Flash Nonfiction

Featuring Paula Carter
9:00am – 10:00am CT

The flash essay is a sharply focused moment in time – a heartbeat. Although brief, full of things necessary for life. In this course, we'll explore the art of flash nonfiction. Lia Purpura says in On Miniatures, “The miniature, a working, functioning complete world unto itself, is not merely a ‘small’ or ‘brief” thing … Miniatures transcend their size, like small-but-vicious dogs, dense chunks of fudge, espresso, a drop of mercury, parasites.”  We’ll read masters of creating a moment, discuss what events lend themselves to the flash form, identify key craft elements in powerful flash pieces, and try our hand at writing one.

Bringing Characters To Life Through Description

Featuring Gioia Diliberto
10:00am – 11:00am CT

All stories – in fiction and nonfiction – have characters, and it’s your job as a writer to make them come alive on the page. A first step is to give readers vivid word pictures.  Specific descriptions of characters ground readers in the world of your story and help them believe in it. If readers can “see” a character in their mind’s eye, they’re much more likely to engage with what’s happening on the page. But description for description’s sake, no matter how beautiful, witty, clever, or colorful, is wasteful unless it illuminates qualities beyond the mere physical. In this workshop, we’ll explore elements that make successful character descriptions and try writing one ourselves.

Make It New: Five Revision Shortcuts

Featuring Juan Martinez
11:00 am – noon CT

I used to hate revision, and now I love it, but it took a lot of work. If you’re a writer trying to figure out revision, how to get your piece to be the best it can be, this workshop can help. You can’t write without revising, and you certainly can’t get to a polished, published piece without heavy-duty revision. In this workshop, I’ll give you five concrete paths for you to take so that you can get a good handle on your revision process – it’s the most challenging part of writing, and one of the hardest to master, but these tools will help.

Scene v. Summary: Creating Narrative Momentum

Featuring billy lombardo
1pm – 2:00pm CT

How do writers navigate the tension between scene and summary in fiction? This is often where writers make mistakes that drag down a story; they employ summary where scene should be and scene where summary should be. In this workshop, we’ll look at “The Ceiling” to examine how Kevin Brockmeier weave vivid, immersive, and heartbreaking scenes with passages of artful compression. Through discussion and exercises, participants will gain a stronger sense of when to slow down and when to speed up, how to transition between these modes of storytelling, and how they work together to shape a compelling narrative.

The Art of Book Reviewing

Featuring Donna Seaman
2:00pm – 3:00pm CT

Description coming soon.

The Path to Publication

Featuring Christine Sneed
3:00pm – 4pm CT

From literary journals to independent presses to book contests to agents and the Big Five publishing houses, this talk will demystify the traditional paths to publication. We’ll discuss when to begin submitting your poetry, fiction, and nonfiction for publication in various contests and literary magazines (and where – a common rookie error: sending to The New Yorker right out of the gate),and briefly discuss the pitfalls and possible benefits of self-publication. We’ll look at a sample cover letter for a journal submission and discuss the situations when it’s appropriate to query agents and how to research who might be a good fit for you and your writing.  

Self-Promotion for Introverts

Featuring Lori Rader-Day
4:00pm – 5:00pm CT

Did you become a writer because you liked the solitude of reading and writing? Bad news: Becoming a published author will require you to carry some, if not all, of the load of promoting your work to the public. If the dread of putting yourself out there is holding you back, join award-winning author Lori Rader-Day for a discussion on strategies to market your book without being inauthentic to who you are.