2023 STORYFEST HOME

2023 STORYFEST:

Friday, Nov. 3-Sunday, Nov.5

Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center

1101 Lincoln St., Columbia, SC 29201

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June 14, 2023

Want to write a book? New York Times bestselling author Ashley Poston, a featured speaker at SCWA's 2023 Storyfest Nov. 3-5, offers this advice:

“Write the book you want to see in the world,” Poston recently told Writers Digest. “You don’t have to reinvent the wheel — that’s impossible at this point, anyway. What makes your book different and unique is the fact that you, with your experiences and your humor and your heart, are writing it.”

It’s good advice. Poston, who works in Charleston, S.C., and New York City, used it to write nine novels and an upcoming Marvel comic book.

In her first book, Geekerella, she updated the classic folk tale Cinderella. In her version, geek girl Elle Wittimer attends a cosplay ball at a science fiction convention. Her prince charming? A disillusioned teen actor and star of Starfield, a popular sci-fi series. The book is “part romance and part love letter to nerd culture,” Poston says, “a fairy tale for anyone who believes in the magic of fandom.”

Geekerella appeared on Seventeen’s 2017 “12 Life-Changing Books You Have to Read This Summer” list.

Poston’s life has a fairy tale feel. After graduating from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor’s in English, she worked in the publishing industry before writing full-time.

Her books include Heart of Iron and Soul of Stars, a two-part space opera, and Among the Beasts & Briars, a YA fantasy.

Her adult debut, The Dead Romantics, was named one of the 100 Notable Books of 2022 by the New York Times.

Publishers Weekly calls her latest novel, The Seven Year Slip, “A poignant, magic-infused contemporary romance... an emotional delight.”

A confessed pantser (her idea of a story outline is a list of bullet points), she writes about 5,000 words a day — 2,000 if she’s interrupted. She downs six cups of coffee while working.

Not that everything comes easy. She rewrote Among the Beasts & Briars eight times before she got the world-building right.

Poston will discuss romance, world-building, fan fiction, geek culture and writing across genres at 2023 Storyfest, SCWA’s annual writing conference in Columbia.

She’s a keynote speaker and a classroom instructor at the three-day event. She’ll be signing books, too.

Want to know more about Poston? Visit her website: https://www.ashposton.com/about.