The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival To Host Virtual Writing Retreat In January

Writer's Resolutions, a daylong writing retreat, will be held online Saturday, January 13, 2024, with five virtual sessions.

The event, hosted by the Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, features authors, agents, and editors leading sessions establishing writing habits, preparing pieces for publication, finding an agent, and more. The retreat is open to writers of any experience level.

"January is resolution-making time for most people, and writers typically set big writing goals for the year,” said TWFest Managing Director Tracy Cunningham. “We want to provide them with access to writers and advice from literary professionals, including editors and agents who can answer their questions and offer advice."

TWFest board member and author C. Morgan Babst, who planned the retreat with Cunningham, said, "Every new year is a fresh chance to recognize and respect your work as a writer. We hope writers will give themselves this retreat as a gift of time, knowledge, and community."

The retreat will begin with a writing session led by the New Orleans Writing Marathon, with a free in-person writing marathon happening simultaneously in the French Quarter for participants who prefer to write all day. The virtual retreat will continue with a session on creating successful habits and habitats, with authors offering a peek into their creative spaces and sharing their organizational structures to sustain a successful writing habit. 

Sessions with professionals continue throughout the day, including literary magazine editors with advice for submitting your work. An agents' panel will demystify the writer/agent relationship and discuss how to craft an agent query letter. Both of those sessions will include live critiques of participants' work (submitted anonymously) to offer specific tips for improvement. The final session is a virtual cocktail hour with opportunities to network, as well as advice on marketing yourself as a writer.

Session presenters include Kayla Min Andrews, Daphne Armbruster, Meakin Armstrong, C. Morgan Babst, Eloy Bliefuss, Nora Gonzalez, Anya Groner, Lisa Ko, Aube Rey Lescure, Alex Marzano Lesnevich, Annell Lopez, Richard Louth, Siwar Mansanat, Susan Martens, Christopher Louis Romaguera, and Michaela Whatnall.

We hope you'll join us so you can meet like-minded writers, learn more about your craft, and renew your writing resolutions for the new year!

Registration is $195, now through January 1. After that date, registration will be $250. More details and the registration link are at www.tennesseewilliams.net.

The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival is a five-day affair for readers, writers, and theatre lovers. The 2024 Festival will be held in-person March 20 - 24.

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