Conference Program
Find below the program for the 2025 WriteAngles Conference.
Please note this is subject to change.
Time: 8:00am-8:30am
Everyone attends!
Coffee, Tea, and Registration
Time: 8:45am-9:30am
Everyone attends!
Welcome & Keynote address, by Franny Choi
Time: 9:45am-11:00am
(Attend One)
We live in a time of repression and war, but also of resistance and change. Some writers want to reflect that by imagining a different future, often only years or decades hence. Often sci-fi, fantasy and spec fic writers have either projected the present onto the future or imagined a far future that’s radically different and unachievable by today’s standards. How do we imagine a near future that is both a radical break with the present yet not distant enough to accommodate our wildest dreams? What do we focus on? Technological change? Cultural shifts? The emergence of new movements and causes? This panel features writers active in this work talking about how they approach this challenge.
Moderator: Mark Schlack
Panelists: Allegra Hyde, Steven Brewer, Marisa Williams, Andrea Hairston
Participants will read selected poems aloud, considering craft, theme, and message. Topics of love, loss, grief, change, wonder and courage will be explored, generated by the poems. Using a line, thought, or image from the work, we’ll journal the idea as a possible beginning of a piece of writing. We’ll share our ideas and reactions.
Presenter: Anita Pappas-Raposa
This generative workshop will explore how in the present atmosphere of erasure and silencing of “the other,” guarding and sharing the word becomes an act of defiance, of resistance, of survival. We will look at selected images of moments of resistance, struggle or defiance, write about them, and share the work with the group. We’ll talk about how using this exercise with groups can connect personal memories, thoughts and reactions to current issues in our contemporary reality.
Presenter: Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa
Revising helps writers find the direction of a scene, the why of a story, the heart of a novel. This session explores several revision tools so we can become what George Saunders calls the “all-purpose friend” to our writing. Participants will read, write and discuss strategies to improve our work.
Presenter: Jennifer Jacobson
There is a myth that author-publishing is only for those who can’t get a publisher, but it is a strategic choice for full creative control, higher royalties, and direct audience engagement. As author-publishing has become more accessible with print-on-demand technology, a writer doesn’t have to wait for the legacy publishing establishment to recognize us—we can recognize each other.
Presenter: Lindsay Whiting.
Time: 11:15am-12:30pm
(Attend One)
Using dreams as source materials for creative writing helps writers at all levels, including those with interrupted or limited formal education, to root their writing in culturally significant and personally relevant material, while providing inspiration and boosting confidence. Participants will experiment with techniques to better serve the diverse participants who currently attend their workshops and classes, and to create a welcoming setting that encourages more to join.
Workshop Leader: Tzivia Gover
We don’t write poems; we write drafts and revise them into poems. This workshop will demonstrate the many facets of close reading that promote compression, confident register, and emotional resonance, as we seek to find the poem in the draft.
Presenter: Michael Favala Goldman
Personal narratives frequently exist against larger backdrops, particularly within political, family, and cultural systems, and can be a powerful tool to create writing that explores themes of intersectionality. This workshop invites writers to view small life snapshots as springboards for literary activism and resistance.
Presenter: Tolley Jones
Writer Zach Doss described speculative fiction as “a lever to get in a crack and express something that can’t be expressed in any other way.” In this generative, interactive workshop, we’ll look at what speculative fiction is, briefly read and discuss excerpts from masters of the strange, then write in response to prompts designed to open the gateways of speculative ideation (in all genres), all while asking the question, Can speculative stories allow us to better express the raw truths of our lived experiences?
Presenter: Joy Baglio
This is a wake-up call for emerging writers and a review for the experienced. Writers are often shocked to discover that, when they submit their manuscript to an agent or editor, that person will expect them to already have a market plan in place and functioning. This seminar will explain how to build a marketing community before submitting a manuscript and how to build on that base during and after publication.
Presenter: J. A. McIntosh.
Time: 12:30pm-1:30pm
Everyone attends!
Lunch and Networking!
Time: 1:45pm-3:00pm
(Attend One)
What do agents actually do? Writers in most genres and at all levels of experience wrestle with the questions of whether and how to seek an agent, and wonder what to expect if they succeed. In this interactive panel discussion, we’ll ask three experienced agents to share what sparks their interest in queries and manuscripts, what turns them off, how they can help writers, and what kind of help they can’t provide.
Moderator: Julie Schlack.
Panelists: Sorche Fairbank, Jeff Herman, and Mariah Stovall.
This poetry workshop explores various ways that using writing constraints can help free your creative mind. Through a series of wordplay exercises and low-stakes writing prompts, participants will explore how self-imposed “rules” — whether around vocabulary, structure, or sound — can lead you to connections, insights, and directions that your controlling mind may be unaware of. The workshop will include opportunities to interact and build on one another’s inventive energy.
Presenter: Lisken Van Pelt Dus
Through consent-based somatic exercises and writing prompts rooted in disability justice, we will experience our bodies and genders as gateways for liberating our writing —and explore writing as a tool for liberation of our bodies and genders—in a time of repression and fear.
Presenter: J. D. Davids
Learn to develop and deliver concise, engaging, and true stories like those on NPR’s Moth Radio Hour, including how to tell tales that resonate with audiences, deciding which details to include or cut, and how to match your stories with specific storytelling themes. You’ll generate story ideas and go home with a list of storytelling resources.
Presenter: Anne Stuart
Often, we think of personal essays and opinion writing as separately-positioned and -styled sub-genres. However, we can pack an opinion punch by telling our lived-experience stories-and telling them well. We can also position ourselves as advocates and thought leaders–especially on the social justice issues that matter most to us. In this session, we’ll define the essay form. We’ll brainstorm possible essay topics and give tips and resources to write about the topic (and your story) that’s calling to you now, in 2025. We’ll also look at ways to (a) Find and (b) Graft in non-writing (science, labor, immigration, climate) data that supports your argument and make your personal story engaging and universal.
Presenter: Áine Greaney
Time: 3:15pm-4:30pm
(Attend One)
This panel of poets, publishers, and judges is designed for writers who want to publish individual poems, chapbooks, or full-length collections. Using hands-on-exercises, it will focus on how to choose and submit to journals, presses and contests, write query letters and bios. Information on self-publishing will also be offered.
Panelists: Gail Thomas, Rebecca Hart Olander, Jennifer Martelli
Writers often struggle with capturing rich, sensory details. This hand-on workshop introduces Field Notes, a method of honing attention to detail inspired by naturalist journals and urban exploration. Participants will engage in guided observation and writing exercises to develop sharper description skills, making their stories more immersive and precise.
Presenter: Christopher J. Sparks
Writing to inspire activism begins with understanding how framing works. Whoever frames a question or debate has a built-in advantage because by responding to it, we reinforce its legitimacy. Anti-abortion-rights activists dub their movement “pro-life.” If we believe in abortion as an option, then, we must be anti-life, pro-death. Reframing it as being about “freedom” turns the tables, and makes “pro-lifers” “anti-freedom.” In this interactive workshop, we’ll analyze some examples of political language and practice how, as activist writers, we can use reframing as a means to seize the narrative and call people to a positive vision.
Presenter: Jan Maher
Flash fiction, a story of 1,000 words or less, gets to the heart of the matter. Compelling and publishable, flash conveys narrative, emotion, and conflict. We’ll examine flash from writers who pack emotional charge, resonant subjects, and surprise into their work, and generate our own new work through prompts and examples
Presenter: Cheryl J. Fish.
This interactive workshop explores best practices for co-creating with AI; from crafting generative prompts that can refine and radically open up our creative work, to developing a productive and meaningful collaboration. We’ll reflect on core artistic precepts such as empathy, presence, and awareness, and consider how they play into engaging with this emergent technology in a way that deepens and expands one’s craft. Through discussions and hands-on exercises, we’ll become more familiar with AI not just as a tool, but a partner in exploration.
**This workshop is also well-suited for writers and artists who haven’t yet worked with AI but are curious to begin.
Interacting one-on-one with AI is not a requirement of this session.
Presenter: Sasha Aronson
Time: 4:45pm-6:00pm
Everyone attends!
Conference Wraps-up. There will be Open Mic at the end of the Event.