Judge and filmmaker Heidi Carroll selected “Keepin’ It Mighty Hot,” co-written by David M. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, as the first prize winner of the first ever 2017 Screenwriting Competition of the Alabama Writer’s Conclave. The script focuses on T.R.M. Howard’s role in the Emmett Till case. We look forward to seeing it produced.

A workshop with Kimberly Cross Teter.

You know those characters living in your head? You think you know them, but do you really? Maybe they have a few surprises for you! We’ll take a look at not only putting flesh on the bones of the characters in your work but also putting meaning and motivations in their hearts and minds. Interactive writing exercises will bring you to a deeper level of creating multi-dimensional characters who will come alive for your readers. Whether you have a work in progress or a brand new idea, this workshop will help you strengthen your character development.

KIMBERLY CROSS TETER, a proud Texas native, is a teacher and traveler by nature and a writer by happy choice. Kim completed her debut novel, Isabella’s Libretto, in the Middle Tennessee State University Write program (then known as The Writers’ Loft) in 2013. The next year this YA historical novel was published by longtime AWC member Linda Busby Parker and Excalibur Press of Mobile, AL. Since then, Kim has traveled from coast to coast to speak at literary festivals, conferences, and special events. Visiting schools, however, is her favorite gig!

Kim is an active member of the AWC, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and the Historical Novel Society. She is a graduate of West Texas A&M University and now lives in Franklin, Tennessee, with a wonderful husband and two feisty canine kids. Three grown human kids have brought her immeasurable happiness — and two grandbabies!

Learn more about Kim at her website.

To attend this workshop — and many others — please register for the 2017 AWC Writer’s Conference. We look forward to seeing you there!

Join us at Grace Aberdean / This Ol' Thing, Sunday March 11, at 6:30pm, as we celebrate 3 published writers! Shanti Weiland Laura Hendrix Ezell and Jessica Kidd will all read from their selected works!

Shanti Weiland
Shanti Weiland’s book Sister Nun is the 2015 winner of the Negative Capability Press Book Competition. Weiland received her BA in English from the University of California, Davis and later moved to the desert, pursuing a Creative Writing MA at Northern Arizona University. She then traveled to the humid and friendly south, where she earned a PhD in Poetry from the University of Southern Mississippi. She currently teaches writing and literature at The University of Alabama and lives in Birmingham with her wife and pets. 

Laura Hendrix Ezell
Laura Hendrix Ezell's story collection, A Record of Our Debts, was winner of the 2015 Moon City Short Fiction Award. Her work has appeared in McSweeney's, Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. She received an MFA in Fiction from The University of Alabama, and currently works as a school librarian in Birmingham.

Jessica Kidd
Jessica Fordham Kidd is a lifelong Alabamian. She is the associate director of first-year writing at the University of Alabama, and her poems have appeared in Drunken Boat, Storyscape, Tinderbox, and The Paris Review among

Listen to the music picked by the author's that inspired their works and characters:

https://open.spotify.com/user/graceaberdean/playlist/3fom3ntocSZj9ZOBwA46Ok

Good & Refreshments will be provided!

We’re looking to reel in some authors! 
 The 3rd Annual Catfish Literary Festival will be held on Saturday, May 27th, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Athens-Limestone Public Library. This one-day literary festival will feature panel discussions and book readings. Each author and vendor who signs up will have their own tables-space to display books and meet their audience.

How you can get involved:
For $5.00, authors and other vendors share a seven-foot table with one other vendor. They can reserve an entire seven-foot table for themselves for $10.00. The Library provides table-space, seating, and light refreshments. In addition, we will promote the event through social and traditional media. We also have free wi-fi available throughout the library. Authors and vendors are responsible for bringing books, point-of-sale devices, money to make change, and any other items. Displays are encouraged, provided they don’t cause unnecessary distraction or impede on another vendor’s space.

Registration and Payment:
Space is limited, and authors must register in advance through the following web-form: https://goo.gl/je8CBx. Paper copies of the form are available at the library if needed.
Payment must be made by 4:00 p.m., May 20th. Payment can be made with cash, check, or credit card in person at the library, by mail, or over the phone.

Make checks out to Athens-Limestone Public Library. Payments can be mailed to Athens-Limestone Public Library, 603 South Jefferson St., Athens, AL 35611. (Please mark “Attn: Catfish Festival Committee.”)

If you have any questions, please email Kristopher Reisz at KREISZ@ALCPL.ORG or call (256) 232-1233.

We hope you can join us for Limestone County’s only literary festival.

Kristopher Reisz
Head of Reference
Athens-Limestone Public Library
(256) 232-1233

The Alabama State Poetry Society is Accepting Submissions for the Annual John and Miriam Norris Memorial Chapbook Competition. Deadline is May 31, 2017. Winner receives $100 and 25 copies of their winning chapbook. 

Poems may be previously published if poet retains all rights. Send 16-24 total pages of poetry, (poems may be longer than one page, but total page count must be 16-24, and no more than one poem per page) with two (2) title pages: one with author identification, and one with NO author identification.

Please send manuscript with a $15 reading fee payable to New Dawn Unlimited, Inc. Mail to: 
NEW DAWN UNLIMITED, INC.
ASPS 2017 Morris Memorial Chapbook Competition
1830 Marvel Road
Brierfield, AL 35035

“I pounded Morse Code for a living for a decade. Saving a few lives was cool, but zipping a few people into body bags was memorable, not cool.”

This week, we explore ten questions with Alabama author and AWC member C.D. (Dean) Bonner.

1. Your favorite novel.

My favorite novel is Tom Sawyer. The writing style becomes invisible as you get caught up in the action that Clemens paints so well. And I’m still a kid splashing around in creeks, even at my age.

2. What inspired you to start writing?

As a teen, I wrote fiction to vent frustrations, and poetry to capture poems that came to me essentially complete — sometimes in my sleep.

For 30 years, I only wrote military communications procedural guides and intelligence reports. But the reason to get serious with writing was to capture family stories, which were mostly humorous, before they were lost.

3. Do you have (or have you ever had) a muse? If so, who/what?

Hmm…. My muses include dreary days that set a (comfortably) melancholy mood; Bob Dylan music, and nature.

4. Your favorite poem.

My favorite poem is a devilishly simple, hard-hitting one, “Death of a Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell:

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

5. Your favorite Alabama plant.

I love the look of azaleas. They remind me of the two times I lived in Mobile.

6. Five words which describe you.

Funny, determined, curious, unpredictable, passionate.

7. One way in which AWC changed/impacted your life.

AWC first impacted my life when, much to my surprise, I was a a nonfiction winner in the 2013 writing competition. I’d only been writing seriously for a year.

8. What is currently on the stove?

I’m working on a second collection of nonfiction humor memoir stories, and on an audio comedy CD of original humor.

I’m also working on a 1951 Studebaker and several antique tube radios.

9. Your favorite place in Alabama and why.

I love the peace of Hillabee Creek above Goldville, Alabama. It’s also a good place to pan and sluice for gold.

10. One thing you need right now to help you as a writer.

I just need more time. I have so many story ideas jotted down but so little time to write them. Apart from battling the writer’s greatest enemy (namely, Time),

C.D. has lived in Guam for two years, witnessed the Northern Lights, dug gold from uncharted places, flown a C-130, albeit briefly. You can learn more about his writing and hobbies online at http://www.cdbonner.net.

Don’t miss the opportunity to catch up with C.D. Bonner this June 17th, 2017, when he will be participating in Authors on the Lake in Guntersville.

1. Your favorite novel.

Choosing one novel would be impossible, so I will give you a list of the books (novels and others) that have stuck with me over the years. Rebeccaby Daphne du Maurier is still the best suspense novel I’ve ever read. More recently, Terror at Bottle Creek by Watt Key brought all of my childhood fears into one terrifying novel. I loved it!

Wicked by Gregory Maguire elevated my childhood obsession of OZ to levels I never knew were possible. Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner is pure brilliance, as is Bridget Jones’ Diary. I believe both exemplify Women’s Lit and shows how complicated, smart, sexy, and funny we all can be.

From Adrift by Steven Callahan, I know what to do if ever lost at sea and will never forget his detailed account, and Pat Conroy’s Lords of Discipline still breaks my heart. Joshilyn Jackson’s Gods in Alabama is so good I’m a little angry that I didn’t write it. So good, I use excerpts from the opening chapter whenever I need an audition monologue for a southern play.

But, as far as the book I have read and re-read, leaving notes in the margins and underlying important passages, that would be The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Corrie died before I could thank her for sharing her story of heroism and miracles. Her bravery got me through some of the toughest times in my life and reminds me always that my life is pretty good and my challenges are not impossible.

2. What inspired you to start writing?

I first began writing in April 2003. My husband was an Army Lieutenant in Iraq, and I was terrified of his being in combat. After work as a puppet stitcher and performer (truth sometimes is better than fiction), I was driving home through downtown Savannah, GA. A war protester stepped in front of my car with a sign that read, “Who would Jesus bomb?” “Jesus has nothing to do with this, jackass,” I thought as I swerved to miss him. I drove directly to the Savannah Morning News office and demanded to the first person I saw that the families of the soldiers receive the same news coverage given the war protesters. The unsuspecting sports editor challenged me to write a column detailing Jay and my war-spurned separation. Perhaps I was sleep deprived because I accepted the challenge and brought him three column samples the next week. He hired me. In 2005, Chicken Soup for the Soul picked up one piece for an anthology. So, I guess you could say then and now I am inspired by those topics, characters, and voices that get under my skin and into my heart. And, I’ve learned over the years that writing is a much better coping skill for stress than some of the other coping skills I’ve tried.

3. Do you have (or have you ever had) a muse? If so, who/what?

Nope.

4. Your favorite poem.

“The Bells” by Edgar Allan Poe. My 7th Grade English teacher introduced me to the world of Poe and changed my life for good. I’d never known writing could be that good, just sink your teeth into it good! That year, I started storytelling competitions searching for any excuse to read or perform Poe.

5. Your favorite Alabama plant.

Any of them that don’t attract mosquitos.

6. Five words which describe you.

Eclectic, humorous, enthusiastic, odd, and kind

7. One way in which AWC changed/impacted your life.

After being away from Alabama, my home, for 15 years, I was afraid Alabama would not accept me as its native child any longer and that the professional writers would not accept me or my work. AWC quickly put that fear to rest as I attended the July 2016 conference in Birmingham.

8. What are you working on right now?

I’m working on the next in the Jubilee Bells saga. Warrior Child occurs over the same time period as Jubilee Bells, but the reader watches an insurgency war through the eyes of a child as Bandit, the protagonist, evolves from favorite son to orphan to child soldier then cherished foundling. My agent is currently shopping Jubilee Bells, so hopefully by the time a publisher is found, I will have Warrior Child finished.

9. Your favorite place in Alabama and why.

My “forever home” in midtown Mobile where my husband, son, and myself moved this past spring.

10. One thing you need right now to help you as a writer.

How about four? Discipline. Energy. Time. Badass-level confidence

To learn more about Jodie, visit www.jodiecainsmith.com or head over to Amazon to purchase her debut, award-winning novel, The Woods at Barlow Bend.

And yes, this writer tweets. Try @jodiecainsmith to keep up with her readings and travels.