You may have noticed that senior editor Ron Hogan hasn’t been posting to the blog as often these past few months—that’s because he’s been focused on a collaborative project with the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction which they’re now prepared to unveil: a one-day writers’ conference which will be held at Fordham University’s Manhattan campus on Saturday, June 27. The day’s panels are intended to address some of the changes that have taken place in the publishing industry and what authors at every experience level can do to adjust to them; highlights will include an opening presentation by former Random House executive editor-in-chief Daniel Menaker, a closing panel led by Jon Karp of Twelve, and a referendum on the book review with novelist Jennifer Weiner, Bookforum editor Albert Mobilio, and Barnes & Noble Review editor-in-chief Jim Mustich. There will also be several more authors, editors, and agents sharing their expertise—and the $200 registration fee also includes one month of access to the Center for Fiction’s writers’ studios in midtown Manhattan (along with the opportunity for a 10 percent discount if you want to keep using the studio after that month).
Lest anyone accuse us of being purely self-promotional, however, let’s call attention to two other conferences which will be coming to New York City at the end of this month…
The Backspace Writers Conference will be held May 29-30, with keynote speeches by John Searles and David Morrell. The panel discussions will cover various aspects of literary technique and the author-agent relationship, from “query letters that work” to “writing the fight scene.” (Full disclosure: There’s also a closed session on Thursday, May 28, where Bella Stander and Ron Hogan will reprise their pitch-crafting workshop from last year’s conference.)
Before Backspace, though, Author 101 University will offer “a crash course in publishing success,” courtesy of Chicken Soup for the Soul maestro Mark Victor Hansen and Guerrilla Marketing expert Rick Frishman (who, again in the interest of full disclosure, was our senior editor’s boss for six months when he first came to New York). This conference is heavily skewed towards writers who want to create hugely successful works of prescriptive nonfiction, with promised revelations like “how to get rich and become famous by being a guest on radio shows without spending a dime on advertising” and “how to make any book you write or publish an Amazon best-seller with a system that has been PROVEN to work.”