Southern Women Writers Conference
|
|
Call for Papers
Ninth Biennial Southern Women Writers Conference
Berry College, Rome,GA
September 20-23, 2012
|
2012 Registration Brochure Now Available!
Featured Speakers
Dorothy
Allison, Stacey Lynn Brown, Marshall Chapman, Melissa Delbridge,
Barbara Hamby, Josephine Humphreys, Kathryn McKee, Melody Moezzi,
Hermine Pinson, Melanie Sumner, Priscilla Wilson, Isabel Wilkerson.
Information About the Emerging Writers Contest and Writing Workshops
Since its inception in 1994, the Southern Women Writers Conference
has been devoted to showcasing the works of well-known and emerging U.S. southern
women writers, expanding the literary canon, and developing critical and
theoretical understandings of the tradition of southern women’s writing.
Due to reduced resources, this
will be the last SWWC, at least for the foreseeable future. In keeping with
this milestone, and with the knowledge that all conclusions constitute new
inceptions, our theme for the 2012 conference is “Beginnings and Endings.” Through their writing, southern women past
and present have addressed both literal and metaphorical “beginnings’ and
“endings” in a variety of ways. The theme certainly conjures up images of births,
deaths, and rebirths and the emotions often associated with those images: joy, excitement,
sadness, grief, anxiety, hesitancy, a sense of freedom, relief, hope. And while positive feelings are usually
associated with beginnings and negative ones with endings, is this always the case? Might endings be celebratory and beginnings sorrowful?
To what degree might “newness” spring from passings? We invite critical and
creative submissions that explore the full range of the conference theme explored
by women in and of the South, including but not limited to:
- literary
eras and genres
- writers’
careers, relationships, projects, and lives
- social
and political institutions
- migrations
and diasporas
- nationalisms
- communities
and ecosystems
- critical
methodologies
- narrative
forms
- canonical
and non-canonical works of fiction, poetry, autobiography, creative
nonfiction, and drama
- non-discursive
works including film, photography, and other visual or performance arts
Critical Submissions: Please send 300-word abstracts or completed papers that can be read aloud in twenty minutes. If submitting a proposal for a panel, please include the names of participants and abstracts for individual papers. Male scholars are encouraged to participate.
Creative submissions: Please submit creative work (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or
drama), appropriate to the conference’s thematic focus, for a
twenty-minute reading. Authors should be women who meet at least
one of the following criteria: were born in or grew up in the U.S. South;
currently live in the U.S. South; write about the U.S. South.
All submissions should be postmarked no later
than Monday, April 30, 2012
and may be sent via e-mail as attachments in MS Word format to swwc@berry.edu
or by regular mail to: Southern Women Writers Conference; Berry College; Box
490350; Mt. Berry, GA 30149. Requests
for multi-media equipment should accompany submissions. For more information, visit the conference
website at http://www.berry.edu/academics/humanities/english/swwc/.
| In
an effort to reduce our use of paper for the 2012 conference, we will be
building a distribution list of contact information for electronic
communication. If you are interested in learning more about the 2012 Southern Women Writers Conference submit your contact information. |