This past weekend, authors, poets and journalists alike gathered at UCF for the first Florida Writers’ Conference to share their latest work, give advice to fellow writers and tell their stories.
UCF literary journal The Florida Review in partnership with The Florida Society of News Editors and its sponsors, Veterans Academic Resource Center, radio station WMFE, the UCF Office of the President and the College of Arts and Humanities invited more than 20 acclaimed writers to UCF for the three-day conference.
“The overall goal was to provide a place in Central Florida that could unite all the various writer communities, not only journalists, academic poets, memoirist and writers,” said Jocelyn Bartkevicius, director of UCF’s Creative Writing MFA program and editor of The Florida Review. “The Orlando area has a great many independent writers, and the overall goal was to bring all of those communities together.”
Or as National Book Award Finalist author Bob Shacochis described it, “To cross-pollinate journalists and creative writers. To bring journalists and creative writers together, for the benefit of both. It’s a great thing for both of them.”
Students and attendees filled the Pegasus Ballroom Thursday night as author and veteran Anthony Swofford helped kick off the conference. Audience members listened to a reading from his latest memoir Hotels, Hospitals and Jails, which is expected to be released in June. Swofford, who is a New York Times bestselling author, is best known for his memoir Jarhead, which was also made into a film. Following the reading, Swofford was available for a Q & A session and a book signing.
“I think any time on campus when you get a bunch of writers together talking, about craft and hearing what the writer’s life is like, what it takes to pursue a story, what the work of a writer is like, it’s always a benefit for students who are thinking of becoming writers,” Swofford said.
Of the students in attendance was freshman biochemistry major Alexa Halas. Halas purchased a copy of the bookJarhead for Swofford to sign as a gift for a friend who recently joined the Marines.
“I really didn’t know what to expect, but I definitely learned a lot about the author,” Halas said.
Some authors who spoke at the conference were available to lend their expertise for individual manuscript consultations. The event offered workshops for writers that ranged from “how to write screenplays” to “how to get published and noticed by agents.”
UCF alumnus and New York Times bestselling author Robert Venditti tapped into his experience as a writer and hosted a session on writing comics and graphic narratives. His comic series The Surrogates was adapted into a film starring Bruce Willis in 2009.
One workshop that generated a lot of interest and audience members was a session on how to create e-books. The lecture was led by author Bob Morris, who has published five e-books of his own and is known for his Zack Chasteenmystery series.
“It’s certainly a time of opportunity for people who want to be a writer,” Morris said. “[E-books] are the future, and even old writers like myself who have been published traditionally and other ways need to grab a hold of this technology and learn how to do it.”
The conference concluded with a reading from NPR host and correspondent Jacki Lyden. Lyden read from a draft of the sequel to her memoir Daughter of the Queen of Sheba. Following the reading, fans were invited to meet with the author for a book signing.
This year’s theme for the conference was “Story Makes the World” and was inspired by the words of the Native American novelist and critic Louis Owens. It was a theme that resonated with Lyden.
“Story has always made my world,” Lyden said. “It really is important to travel. I know that in a physical life not everyone can, but they don’t need to because they have all these books traveling for them, and that’s the world literature makes.”
