2023 STORYFEST HOME

STORYFEST 2023:

Friday, Nov. 3-Sunday, Nov.5

Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center

1101 Lincoln St., Columbia, SC 29201

REGISTER NOW

Janisse Ray

Janisse Ray is a naturalist, activist, poet, essayist and author. Her early memoir, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, won the Southeastern Booksellers Award for Nonfiction, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction and the American Book Award in 2000. Since then, she has written or edited over a dozen books and has been published in more than 40 anthologies. Her work has won her a Pushcart Prize and the Nautilus Book Award. She was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2015. Reviewers and writers call Ray a modern-day Rachel Carson and Walt Whitman. “Seriously great,” says author Franklin Burroughs of her 2021 book, Wild Spectacle. She believes in the power of stories to transform a single person, a community, or a nation.

Friday Masterclass: Market Your Book Skyward

Saturday Keynote: Five Challenges to Great Writing and How to Conquer Them

Saturday Craft Class: Write Your Own Story

Jason Mott

National Book Award winner Jason Mott has received numerous awards and honors for his novels and poetry. The Returned, his debut novel, was adapted for television and aired on the ABC network under the title “Resurrection.” His fourth novel, Hell of A Book, released in June 2021, was a Jenna Bush Hager “Read With Jenna” Book Club pick, a Carnegie Medals For Excellence in Fiction Longlist selection, a 2022 Housatonic Book Award Winner, and a 2021 National Book Award for Fiction winner. He has a BFA in Fiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is the author of two poetry collections and four novels.  Entertainment Weekly calls him one of 10 “New Hollywood: Next Wave” people to watch.

Saturday Keynote

Saturday Panel: Writing the Breakout Novel

Sunday Panel: Writing in the South

Ashley Poston

Ashley Poston is the New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of eight books, including The Dead Romantics, The Seven Year Slip, Among the Beasts & Briars, and Soul of Stars. After graduating from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor’s in English, she worked in the publishing industry before pursuing writing full-time. Her early novel Geekerella — part romance, part love letter to nerd culture — appeared on Seventeen’s 2017 “12 Life-Changing Books You Have to Read This Summer” list. Her adult debut, The Dead Romantics, was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2022 by the New York Times. Bestselling author Carley Fortune calls Poston “one of the finest romance writers out there.”

Saturday Keynote

Saturday Craft Class: Writing the Romance Novel

Elise Blackwell

Elise Blackwell is the author of five novels: Hunger, The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish, Grub, An Unfinished Score and The Lower Quarter. Her work has been translated into several languages, and her books have been named to numerous best-of-the-year lists, adapted for the stage, and served as the inspiration for the song “When the War Came” by The Decemberists. She’s been compared to Truman Capote and Joseph Conrad. Originally from southern Louisiana, Blackwell teaches in the MFA program at the University of South Carolina and hosts the literary series The Open Book.

Susan M. Boyer

Susan M. Boyer is the author of the USA TODAY bestselling Liz Talbot mystery series. Her debut novel, Lowcountry Boil, won the 2012 Agatha Award for Best First Novel and the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense. The third book in the series, Lowcountry Boneyard, was a spring 2015 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick and was short-listed for the 2016 Pat Conroy Beach Music Mystery Prize. She has written 11 books in the Liz Talbot series. The South Carolina writer launched a new series — Carolina Tales — this year with her much-anticipated Big Trouble on Sullivan’s Island, featuring Charleston gumshoe Hadley Cooper.

Saturday Panel: Whodunit? Writing the Mystery Novel

Amy Collins

Amy Collins, an agent with the Talcott Notch Literary Services agency, has spent more than 30 years in the publishing industry as a book buyer, sales director for a large nonfiction publisher and founder of New Shelves Books, one of the largest book sales and marketing companies in the U.S. She focuses on nonfiction, history, historical fiction, fantasy and sci-fi. Collins, a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, has spent her career working with Barnes & Noble, Target, Costco, Books-A-Million and Walmart as well as bookstores and libraries. She’s a frequent speaker at writing festivals and conferences, including Publisher’s Weekly’s BookCon, NY PitchFest, Dallas Book Con and Writers Digest’s Annual Conference. She critiques writing samples through a boot camp offered each year by Writers Digest.

Friday Masterclass: How Publishing Works: Learn How to Work the System to Your Advantage

Agent Pitches

Saturday Publishing Class: The Dreaded Comp Titles: A Necessary Evil That Can Launch Your Career

Saturday Queryfest

Wanda Craig, writing as Raegan Teller, is the award-winning author of the Enid Blackwell Mystery Series. Two of her novels received Honorable Mention in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. ”One of the best I’ve read this year,” said one Digest judge, adding, a “great storyteller.” Craig is a member of Sisters in Crime, Southeastern Writers Association, Charlotte Writers Club and the Alliance of Independent Authors. Her mystery novels include Murder Clause, Time to Prey and The Fifth Stone.  Before becoming an author, she worked as a business writer, copy editor, marketing manager and executive coach. As a student, she even sold burial vaults. Says Craig: “How apropos is that for a mystery writer.”

Renee C. Fountain

Renee C. Fountain champions various genres, ranging from adult thrillers to informative nonfiction and close-to-her-heart YA. Over the years, Fountain has helped launch several crime thriller writers and series, including Sarah Cain’s The 8th Circle, Michel Logan’s Hell’s Detective and Jonathan Fredrick’s Cain City series. Before putting on her agent hat, she spent five years working for the CW television network as a book scout and story analyst for television development. She spent nearly a decade working in major publishing houses, including Harcourt Brace and Simon & Schuster, where she worked with some of the best writers and illustrators in the publishing world.  In addition to looking for the next best-seller, Fountain also can be found on the faculty of Manuscript Academy, providing developmental editing and writing critiques.

Agent Pitches

Saturday Queryfest

Julia Franks

Julia Franks is the author of Over the Plain Houses, an NPR Best Book of 2016, and the winner of five prestigious literary prizes, including the Townsend Prize for Georgia fiction and the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award. She has published essays in the New York Times, The Bitter Southerner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Author Wiley Cash calls her 2023 novel, The Say So, “a powerful novel, and an important one too.” The book is part of the Cold Mountain Fund Series in partnership with award-winning author Charles Frazier.

Saturday Panel: Writing the Breakout Novel

Andrew Geyer

Andrew Geyer is the author, co-author and editor of 11 books, including the novels Dixie Fish and Meeting the Dead and the short story collection Lesser Mountains, winner of the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Award Silver Medal for Regional/Southern Fiction. His short stories have won numerous accolades, including two Spur Awards for Best Short Story from the Western Writers of America.  A member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the South Carolina Academy of Authors Literary Hall of Fame, Geyer chairs the English Department at USC-Aiken and is the fiction editor at the Concho River Review.

Saturday Panel: Short Story 101

Sunday: Slushfest

Manuscript Critiques

Halle Hill

Halle Hill is a PEN/Dau Short Story Prize nominee and winner of the 2021 Crystal Wilkinson Creative Writing Prize, the 2020 Oxford American Debut Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the 2021 ASME Award for Fiction. Her work is featured in Joyland, New Limestone Review, and Oxford American. This year, Hub City Press published her debut collection, Good Women: Stories, which examines the lives of twelve Black women across Appalachia and the Deep South.

Saturday Panel: Short Story 101

Saturday Craft Class

Claire Jimenez

Claire Jimenez is a Puerto Rican writer who grew up in Brooklyn and Staten Island. She is the author of Staten Island Stories, which won the 2019 Hornblower Award from the New York Society Library. Her new novel, What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez, was dubbed a “Most Anticipated Book of 2023” by USA Today, Elle and Goodreads. The book also made the “Best Books of March” list by Time, Ms. Magazine, Popsugar, Bookriot and Powell’s Book Blog. Jimenez is an assistant fiction editor at Prairie Schooner and teaches at the University of South Carolina.

Saturday Panel: Writing the Breakout Novel

Holly Goddard Jones

Holly Goddard Jones is the author of four books, including her 2022 story collection Antipodes. Her other titles include The Salt Line, The Next Time You See Me, and Girl Trouble: Stories. Her work has appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories, New Stories from the South, and Tin House magazine. She received The Fellowship of Southern Writers' Hillsdale Prize for Excellence in Fiction and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award. “Erase every qualifier: American, living, southern. Holly Goddard Jones is one of our greatest storytellers — period,” says author David James Poissant. Jones teaches creative writing at UNC Greensboro.

Saturday Panel: Short Story 101

Saturday Craft Class

Brad Land

Brad Land’s 2004 memoir, Goat, was a bestselling account of violence and brotherhood in the Deep South. The Orchid Thief author Susan Orlean called Goat “a breathtaking book, a rough ride over the emotions of adolescence and the brutal business of being an American man.” Land’s voice, she added, “is distinct, melancholic, and original; the book is a wonderful debut.” Goat was adapted into a 2016 film starring Nick Jonas and James Franco. Since then, Land has written a novel, Pilgrims Upon the Earth, and received two independent filmmaker grants from the South Carolina Film Commission. He is the writer, director and producer of the short films Boss and Pilgrims. A two-time fellow at MacDowell, he has written for GQ, The Oxford American, Quarter After Eight, Rivendale, Third Coast and Ecotone.

Charlie Lovett

Charlie Lovett is a New York Times bestselling novelist and playwright. His plays for children have been seen in over 5,000 productions worldwide. He hosts the podcast Inside the Writer’s Studio. Kirkus Reviews called his debut novel, The Bookman’s Tale, a “pleasurably escapist trans-Atlantic mystery … intricately layered with plots, murders, feuds, romances, forgeries — and antiquarian book dealing.” Since then, Lovett has written seven novels, including two in 2022: The Enigma Affair, a thriller about a small-town librarian and a professional assassin who solve a 75-year-old Nazi mystery, and The Book of the Seven Spells, a middle-grade mystery about four children who discover a magical library.

Saturday Craft Class: Writing Across Genres: Mainstream, Mystery, YA & Thrillers

Kate McMullen

Kate McMullen is the managing editor at Hub City Press in Spartanburg, South Carolina She received her MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she worked as the publishing assistant for Lookout Books. Her fiction has appeared in Paper Darts, Carve Magazine, The Boiler, Foglifter, The Pinch and elsewhere. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, she is the 2015 recipient of UNCW’s Colbert Chapbook Award. You will find Kate reading short stories, literary oddities, cookbooks and true crime. She lives downtown in Spartanburg with her partner and a pit bull named Holstein.

Saturday Publishing Class: Traditional and Small Press Publishing

Pitch Speed Dating

Joshua Parks

A photographer, public historian and community organizer, Joshua Parks is the digital programs and community engagement specialist at the International African American Museum in Charleston. His family history is deeply rooted in the Lowcountry, where he is a direct descendant of the people of Sol Legare Island, a historic Gullah-Geechee sea island community. A graduate of Howard University, Parks is the author of The Green Book of South Carolina: A Guide to African American Cultural Sites, which identifies more than 180 African American historic markers, structures, and landmarks.

Saturday Panel: Capturing Southern History

Glenis Redmond

Glenis Redmond is the first poet laureate of Greenville, S.C. A Kennedy Center Teaching Artist, she has authored six books of poetry, including Backbone, Under the Sun, What My Hand Say and The Three Harriets (and Others). She founded the first Greenville Poetry Slam in 1995 and took the first all-women’s team to the nationals. She also helped start WordSlam, the youth slam movement in Asheville, N.C. She’s received the Governor’s Award and the Peacemaker Award and is a member of the South Carolina Academy of Authors. She describes herself as a poet, an imagination activist, and “a gentle pen pusher.”

Saturday Craft Class

Sunday Poetry Panel

Meg Reid

Meg Reid is the executive director of Hub City Writers Project in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where she finds and champions new and overlooked voices from the American South, including Carter Sickels, Drew Lanham, Ashley M. Jones and Anjali Enjeti. An editor and book designer, her essays have appeared online in outlets like DIAGRAM, Oxford American and The Rumpus. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she served as assistant editor of the literary magazine Ecotone and worked for the literary imprint Lookout Books. Hub City has published over 100 literary works of fiction, poetry and nonfiction. Its books have been praised and featured in The New York Times, NPR, Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly and Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.

Saturday Publishing Class: Traditional and Small Press Publishing

Pitch Speed Dating

Chad Rhoad

Chad Rhoad is an editor at the Charleston-based Arcadia Press. He earned an MFA in fiction from the University of South Carolina. The former journalist and newspaper editor has been a project editor for more than 350 titles in history, true crime, fiction and culture. He’s appeared at the Atlanta Writer’s Conference and the Florida Writer’s Association. He teaches writing and literature at the university level. Says James C. Clark, the author of A History Lover’s Guide to Florida: “Chad Rhoad has made scores of books better and their authors more successful with his deft editing touch.”

Manuscript Critiques

Sunday Panel on Southern Writing

Sunday Slushfest

Deb Richardson-Moore

Deb Richardson-Moore is the author of four mystery novels and a memoir, The Weight of Mercy, about her early years as a pastor at the Triune Mercy Center in Greenville, S.C. A former national award-winning reporter for The Greenville News, Richardson-Moore is a popular speaker at book clubs and universities. “From the first page, she pulls you into her story,” says author John Jeter. Her new novel, Murder, Forgotten, is full of “sneaky twists and turns,” says LoveReading. Adds mystery writer Sally Handley: “Her cast of characters with their many secrets will keep you guessing whodunit right to the end.”

Saturday Panel: Whodunit? Writing the Mystery Novel

Art Turfa

Arthur Turfa is the award-winning author of six books of poetry, including Places and Times, Accents and Saluda Reflections. Originally from Pennsylvania, his writings reflect places where he has lived or traveled, as well as his careers in the Lutheran Church, higher education and the U.S. Army. His novel, The Botleys of Beaumont County, was published on Blurb last year. The Lexington, South Carolina, writer is a fiction reader for the Northern Appalachia Review and a poetry reader for The Petigru Review, SCWA’s literary magazine. His work has appeared in numerous publications, online and in print, nationally and internationally.