Napa Writers' Conference Announcement

Writers and Poets, Start Your Engines

Registration starts March 1 for the Summer Napa Valley Writers' Conference.

• By Betty Malmgren

Fiction writers and poets can submit applications beginning March 1 for the opportunity to work side-by-side with renowned authors at the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, slated for July 22-27, 2012. The faculty for this year’s conference features poet Eavan Boland and Tayari Jones, whose novel Silver Sparrow was released last year to wide acclaim.

Boland, who was born in Dublin, Ireland, is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters and directs the creative writing program at Stanford University. She has published ten volumes of poetry, the most recent being New Collected Poems and Domestic Violence. She has received the Lannan Award for Poetry and an American Ireland Fund Literary Award.

Jones was recently awarded a 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Silver Sparrow was named a top book of 2011 by Library Journal, O Magazine, Slate and Salon, and has been nominated for a NAACP Image Award.

... Full conference tuition – including workshops, lectures, evening events and most meals – is $900. One in five conference attendees receive full or partial scholarships, which are awarded according to merit and need. Rolling admissions begin March 1, and scholarship applications are due April 2. For application materials and guidelines and further information visit napawritersconference.org.