Visiting Writers Announced for New Leaves Conference

Visiting Writers Announced for New Leaves Conference

Mason’s creative writing program offers an array of events featuring visitors that come to the campus to read from their work and conduct workshops or master classes for students. Next up: The New Leaves festival.

Readings, panels, and presentations on life as a writer highlight the 2017 New Leaves events. Topics include how to get fellowships, apply for grants, and network through social media; the Washington freelance market; and writing for money in D.C. publishing. The full schedule will be posted at creativewriting.gmu.edu

Anchoring New Leaves, always, are the visiting writers:

  • Monday, April 3 —Fiction writer Laura van den Berg, author most recently of the novel Find Me, selected as a Best Book by NPR, and the story collections What The World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us and The Isle of Youth.
  • Tuesday, April 4— Nonfiction alum Mike Scalise (’08), author of The Brand New Catastrophe, which explores his experiences after a ruptured pituitary tumor leaves him with the hormone disorder acromegaly and forces him to navigate the world of illness. 
  • Thursday, April 6—Poet Spencer Reece, whose debut collection The Clerk’s Tale was chosen for the Blakeless Poetry Prize by Louise Gluck and adapted into a short film by James Franco. Chaplain to the bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church in Spain, Reece won a 2012 Fulbright to work on collaborative writing with orphanage children in Honduras.

Each reading will be at 7:30 p.m. in Research Hall, Room 163.