Save the Date for
LET’S JUST WRITE! Chicago's Writers Conference
March 21-23, 2025
HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2024:
- Keynote speaker: Jonathan Eig, author of the instant NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, King: A Life and five other best-selling books.
- Ana Castillo, who has been called a national treasure, for an engaging and enlightening conversation at the Saturday dinner.
- Welcome reception and Live Lit on Friday evening
- Master classes with some of your favorite presenters
- Pitch sessions with agents/publishers - sign-up will open in January
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MEMORIES FROM 2024
Meet our conference presenters.
Raymond Benson
Raymond Benson was a Traditional Fiction finalist in CWA’s most recent Book of the Year Awards with his darkly comic suspense novel, The Mad, Mad Murders of Marigold Way, which also won the IPPY (Independent Publishers Book Awards) Gold Medal in Mystery. The author of over forty published titles, Raymond is most well-known for being the third—and first American—to pen official James Bond novels. His acclaimed best-selling five-book serial, The Black Stiletto, is in development to be a feature film or television series.
- Panel Discussion: Genre Fiction: What is It, How to Do It and Does It Matter?
Ana Castillo
Ana Castillo, Ph.D. has penned more than two dozen titles to date in a range of genres. She is credited as a pioneer of Chicana/x, feminist works with a career that spans nearly half a century. Her most recent book is Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home: Stories (HarperVia; May, 2023). Forthcoming works: Isabel 2121 (novel) Harpervia; May 2024.
- We’re excited to welcome best selling author Ana Castillo as our featured speaker for Let’s Just Chat!, the special conversation at our Saturday dinner.
Lyn Liao Butler
Lyn Liao Butler is a Taiwanese American author of thrillers, upmarket fiction, and rom-coms. Her most recent thriller, Someone Else’s Life, was an Amazon bestseller and her second book Red Thread of Fate is a finalist in the WFWA Star Awards. She was a professional ballet and modern dancer, and is still a fitness/yoga instructor.
- Presentation: Writing Across Genres
- Master Class: Writing Your Query Letter
Bonnie Jo Campbell
Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of the novels The Waters (January 9, 2024), Once Upon a River, a National Bestseller that was adapted into a full-length feature film released to international claim in 2020, and Q Road. Her critically acclaimed short fiction collections have won numerous awards and prizes and include American Salvage, Women and Other Animals, and Mothers, Tell Your Daughters. She was a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow whose other honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Eudora Welty Prize, and the Mark Twain Award. She lives outside Kalamazoo with her husband and two donkeys.
- Presentation: When the Writer Plays God
Tracy Clark
Tracy Clark is the author of the Detective Harriet Foster crime fiction series, including her two 2023 novels, Fall and Hide. She is a two-time Sue Grafton Memorial Award-winning author and the 2022 winner of the Sara Paretsky Award. The four novels in her Cass Raines series (2018-2021) have also been honored as Anthony Award and Lefty Award finalists and have been shortlisted for the American Library Association's RUSA Reading List, named a CrimeReads Best New PI Book of 2018, a Midwest Connections Pick, and a Library Journal Best Books of the Year.
- Panel Discussion: Genre Fiction: What is It, How to Do It and Does It Matter?
Curtis Crisler
Indiana Poet Laureate Curtis L. Crisler is an award-winning poet/author who has six poetry books, two YA books, and five poetry chapbooks. He’s been published in a number of magazines, journals, and anthologies and is an editor and contributing poetry editor. He created the Indiana Chitlin Circuit, the poetry form called the sonastic, and is Professor of English at Purdue University Fort Wayne (PFW). He can be contacted at www.poetcrisler.com.
- How Poetry Can Inform Your Fiction, Nonfiction and Memoir
- Master Class: Poetry: Get Out of Your Own Way and Create
Jonathan Eig
Jonathan Eig is the bestselling author of six books, including his most recent King: A Life, which The New York Times hailed as a “monumental” new biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
His previous book, Ali: A Life, won a 2018 PEN America Literary Award and was a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize. Esquire magazine named Ali: A Life one of the 25 greatest biographies of all time. Joyce Carol Oates called it “an epic of a biography” that “reads like a novel.”
His works have been translated into more than a dozen languages.
- Keynote Speaker
Ann Garvin
Ann Garvin, Ph.D. is the USA Today bestselling author of five funny and sad novels, including her latest, There’s No Coming Back From This.
Ann is the founder of the multiple award-winning Tall Poppy Writers where she is committed to helping women writers succeed. She is a sought-after speaker on writing, leadership and health and has taught extensively in NY, San Francisco, LA, Boston, and at festivals across the country and in Europe.
- How Writing Your Synopsis Can Fix Your Book
- Master Class: How to Summarize Your Book So It Sells
Keir Graff
The author of 13 books, including books written solo, with a collaborator, under pseudonyms, books for adults, books for middle-grade readers, etc..., and former executive editor of Booklist, Keir Graff writes the Minerva Keen’s Detective Club series with James Patterson and novels about marriages in peril with Linda Joffe Hull as Linda Keir. He shares insights on the writing life in Graff Paper, available at keirgraff.com/newsletter.
- Collaboration: How Writing With Others Can Improve Your Craft
- Master Class: If You Don’t Have Conflict, You Don’t Have a Story: Five Simple Ways to Build Tension in Your Book
Karen Karbo
Karen Karbo is the author of fourteen award-winning novels. Three of her novels and her memoir The Stuff of Life were all named New York Times Notable Books. Her latest book is Yeah, No. Not Happening.
Karbo’s short stories, essays, articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications. She publishes Karbohemia Confidential where you can read her hilarious essays about living in the south of France where she writes and runs the Come to Your Senses writing retreat.
- How to Make a Living With Your Writing and Still Write the Great American Novel
- Master Class: All Hail the Second Draft
Catherine Lanigan
Despite being told by her college creative-writing professor that she had “no writing talent whatsoever,” Catherine Lanigan has been writing novels for over 35 years and authored more than 40 fiction and nonfiction titles. Her bestselling romances, including the novelizations of Romancing the Stone and The Jewel of the Nile, have been translated into 27 languages. In 2018, Catherine’s Hearts Desire was adapted into the movie “The Sweetest Heart” and aired on the Hallmark Channel.
- Panel Discussion: Genre Fiction: What is It, How to Do It and Does It Matter?
Eric Charles May
Eric Charles May is the author of the novel Bedrock Faith, which was named a 2014 Notable African-American title by Publishers Weekly, and a Top Ten Debut Novel for 2014 by Booklist Magazine, and the 2015 recipient of the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library. May is a former reporter for The Washington Post. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications. He is an associate professor in the fiction writing program at Columbia College Chicago.
- Presentation: Let's Get Personal: Making Your Mark Through the Personal Essay
Dipika Mukherjee
Dipika Mukherjee writes fiction, poetry and essays, and academic papers. She travels. Then she writes about the travel. Nothing like the lulling motion of an old train track, or a path that calls with smells of warm food, both familiar and new.
A collection of her travel essays will be published by Penguin Random House (SEA) in 2023. Right now, she is working on a third novel, as well as a hybrid memoir. When not writing, or travelling, she teaches at StoryStudio Chicago and the Graham School of University of Chicago).
- Presentation: From Armchair to Being There: Making Travel Writing Pop
- Panel Discussion: Your Nonfiction Story From Pitch to Publication
Dominic Pacyga
Dominic A. Pacyga is professor emeritus of history in the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. His books include Polish Immigrants and Industrial Chicago: Workers on the South Side, 1880–1922; Chicago: A Biography; and Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stock Yard and the World It Made, all from the University of Chicago Press. Pacyga is the 2014 Mieczyslaw Haiman Award winner for exceptional and sustained contribution to the study of Polish Americans.
- Panel Discussion: Your Nonfiction Story From Pitch to Publication
Christine Maul Rice
Christine Maul Rice’s award-winning novel, Swarm Theory, was called "a gripping work of Midwest Gothic" by Michigan Public Radio and won numerous other awards and prizes. Christine was included in New City's Lit 50: Who Really Books in Chicago 2019 and named One of 30 Writers to Watch by Chicago's Guild Complex. Most recently, her short stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in Allium, 2020: The Year of the Asterisk*, and many other publications. Christine is the founder of the literary nonprofit Hypertext Magazine & Studio and is an Assistant Professor of English at Valparaiso University.
- In conversation with Ana Castillo at the Saturday dinner
Cyn Vargas
Cyn Vargas, acclaimed faculty at StoryStudio Chicago, received praise for "On The Way," lauded by Shelf Awareness and Library Journal. Her work has earned The Guild Literary Award for Fiction and other accolades. "Nothing's Ever The Same," her upcoming short novel, will be released in May 2024 by Tortoise Books.
Explore at cynvargas.com.
- Presentation: The Importance of Storytelling in Memoir
- Master Class: Igniting Your Short Story
Cyrus Webb
Cyrus Webb is a media personality, Editor-In-Chief of Conversations Magazine, author, Social Media Influencer, Brand Strategist, Publicist and Top 100 Amazon.com Reviewer. Since 2003 he has built the Conversations brand into an internationally-recognized force that not just shares the stories of others but is making a difference in the way that people see themselves and what is possible.
Webb produces content for Amazon, including being an on-air personality for Amazon LIVE. He is the author of the inspirational books POWER YOUR LIFE WITH THE POSITIVE and WORDS I CHOOSE TO LIVE BY, both available on Amazon.com.
For more information contact Cyrus Webb at www.cyruswebb.com
- Social Media: Social Media: It Doesn't Have to be Overwhelming
Audrey Wilson
Audrey Wilson is an award-winning author and screenwriter with a BA in Television Writing and Producing from Columbia College Chicago. Audrey's debut thriller Wrong Girl Gone was published by Dreaming Big Publications, and her next book, Only Human, an LGBTQ+ romance, will be released February 1, 2024 by Flashpoint Publications. In addition to her novels, Audrey has written over two dozen screenplays and television episodes, and has won a variety of awards for her writing, including a regional Emmy nomination. As a screenwriter, she is represented by Aligned Talent Group.
- Presentation: From Story to Screen: Adapting Your Book into a Screenplay
Mary Wisniewski
Mary Wisniewski is a longtime journalist, editor and writing teacher, whose book Algren: A Life won the Society of Midland Authors award for best biography and the Chicago Writers Association award for best nonfiction. She has been a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. Mary currently writes about theater, literature and community issues for Chicago Magazine and Newcity, and won a 2022 Lisagor award for theater criticism.
- Panel Discussion: Your Nonfiction Story From Pitch to Publication
Agents and Publishers
April Eberhardt, April Eberhardt Literary
April Eberhardt, a literary change agent and author advocate, assists authors in being published most successfully given the evolving publishing landscape. She serves on the Advisory Council for The American Library in Paris, and is a reader for the Best American Short Stories series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
April welcomes all non-genre adult fiction be it book club, commercial-to-literary, or historical. No romance, mystery/triller, sci-fi, extraterrestial or YA.
- Pitch sessions
- Workshop
Doug Grad, Doug Grad Literary Agency
The Doug Grad Literary Agency, Inc. opened for business in 2008, after Doug spent the previous twenty-two years as a senior editor at four major New York publishing houses. Throughout his editorial career, Doug was always an author’s advocate--the kind of editor authors wanted to work with because of his keen eye, integrity, and talent for developing projects. He was also a skillful negotiator, sometimes to the chagrin of literary agents.
Doug's genre's of interest: Narrative non-fiction, military, sports, celebrity memoir, thrillers, mysteries, historical fiction, romance, music, style, business, home improvement, cookbooks, self-help, science and theater.
- Pitch sessions
- Agent panel
Joanna Mackenzie, Nelson Literary Agency
Joanna MacKenzie represents authors writing for adult and children's markets across all areas of fiction. She is drawn to vivid, engaging writing and is particularly interested in high concept thrillers, voicey mysteries, dark academia, stories that straddle genres, and women's fiction where the personal intersects with the world at large.
- Pitch sessions
Andy Ross, Andy Ross Literary Agency
I opened my literary agency in January 2008. Prior to that I was the owner of the legendary Cody's Books in Berkeley, California for 30 years.
I represent authors who write books in a wide range of subjects including: narrative non-fiction, science, journalism, history, current affairs, contemporary culture, religion, children's books and commercial and literary fiction.
- Pitch sessions
- Agent panel
Peter Rubie, FinePrint Literary Management
Peter Rubie has been in New York publishing as an agent, editor and published writer for nearly 40 years. He is the CEO of Fine Print Literary Management which he formed in 1998.
Preferences: Nonfiction - narrative non-fiction, popular science, spirituality, history, biography, pop culture, business and technology, parenting, health, self help, music, and food. In fiction he represents literate thrillers, crime fiction, science fiction and fantasy, military fiction and literary fiction, middle grade and some boy-oriented young adult fiction.
- Pitch sessions
Tina P Schwartz, The Purcell Agency
Tina P Schwartz is the founder and literary agent at The Purcell Agency, LLC, near Chicago. She has written 10 traditionally published nonfiction books for children and teens. Tina started The Purcell Agency in 2012.
Tina's preferences: Women’s Fiction, Women’s Romance, LGBTQ, Young Adult, and Middle Grade.
- Pitch sessions
Morena Stamm, Wild Rose Press
Morena Stamm has a masters in Intercultural and International Communication from Royal Roads University and degree in Communication Studies from MacEwan University. She has been an editor for The Wild Rose Press for the last 3 years, and as a freelancer for the last 8 years. Morena is a lover of all things romance, including rose gardens, chocolate cake, and meet-cute movies.
The Wild Rose Press is actively seeking submissions in all genres of fiction. We are open to full length or short stories in adult fiction across all lines. We have room for submissions in our suspense line, our contemporary lines, as well as paranormal, historical, and erotic. We would love the chance to hear about what you are writing and discuss your current manuscript.
- Pitch sessions
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