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Writing | Writers Workshop

Learn about the craft and business of writing with the Atlanta Writers Club.

Learn more about writing, network with other writers, and listen to accomplished authors offer tips to improve your writing.

Complimentary refreshments for members and first-time visitors during Network & Nosh mixer (12:45 pm - 1:30 pm). This is a great opportunity to get to know each other, find critique or accountability partners, get your questions answered about writing topics, and more.

1:30 pm - 1:45 pm  AWC announcements and upcoming events with AWC President Jill Evans

1:45 pm - 2:45 pm  Speaker 1 - Mary McMyne

Research for Novelists - Historical fiction isn’t the only writing genre that benefits from research. Commercial and literary novels draw inspiration from news stories or contemporary politics. Speculative novels use magic systems and worlds inspired by folklore (Tolkien), or plots inspired by history (Game of Thrones). Research can take many forms: studying story structure, mining personal experience, reading obscure magical grimoires, and making a character’s lived experience your own. Some of the most inspiring research I conducted for my own novels were the latter—attending plays at the Shakespeare Tavern and the Globe for my novel A Rose by Any Other Name, walking in my main characters’ footsteps in the Black Forest for my fairy tale retelling The Book of Gothel, and exploring locations in my current fairy tale retelling-in-progress in the Scottish Highlands. 

Mary McMyne is a novelist and poet who is fascinated with the stories behind stories. She is the author of the novels The Book of Gothel and A Rose by Any Other Name. Her fairy tale poetry chapbook, Wolf Skin, won the Elgin Chapbook Award. A graduate of the New York University MFA program, she has received the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for a Novel-in-Progress and a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, among other honors. She is an assistant professor of fiction in the MAPW program at Kennesaw State University and the poetry editor for Enchanted Living.

2:45 pm - 3:00 pm  Book signing and Break

3:00 pm - 4:00 pm  Speaker 2 – Mary Robinette Kowal

How to Give an Effective Reading - One of the things a writer is often called upon to do is to read their work. Whether this is on a book tour, or at a convention, there are some simple tricks that can hold an audience’s attention and make your work come alive.

Mary Robinette Kowal is the author of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning alternate history novel The Calculating Stars, the first book in the Lady Astronaut series which continues in 2025 with The Martian Contingency. She is also the author of The Glamourist Histories series, Ghost Talkers, The Spare Man and has received the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, four Hugo awards, the Nebula and Locus awards. Her stories appear in Asimov’s, Uncanny, and several Year’s Best anthologies. Mary Robinette has also worked as a professional puppeteer, is a member of the award-winning podcast Writing Excuses, and performs as a voice actor (SAG/AFTRA), recording fiction for authors including Seanan McGuire, Cory Doctorow, and Neal Stephenson. She lives in Denver with her husband Robert, their dog Guppy, and their “talking” cat Elsie. Visit her online at maryrobinettekowal.com.

4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Book signing

Books will be available for purchase from Bookmiser.

Learn more about the Atlanta Writers Club. 

Registration is requested.

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