The University of Tennessee at Martin’s Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages will host its 19th Young Writers Conference from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 7, in the Boling University Center on the UT Martin campus.
The conference is open to students in grades 9-12 and their teachers, with a registration fee of $10 per student; registration is free for participating teachers. The deadline to register and pay the conference fee is Friday, Oct. 24. Fees can be paid at tinyurl.com/54h2m867. For more information about registration, contact conference coordinator Dr. Maari Carter at mcarte72@utm.edu or call at 731-881-7288.
The UT Martin Young Writers Conference was first held in 2006 and has continued annually each year with the exception of 2020. This conference fosters literacy and creative expression through a series of writing workshops taught by UT Martin faculty and visiting writers.
The Young Writers Conference will include workshops, readings and a luncheon along with a keynote address by guest speaker James E. Cherry, an internationally published poet, fiction writer and literary activist.
Cherry has a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and now resides in Jackson, Tennessee, where he is founder of the Jazz Foundation of West Tennessee, a nonprofit dedicated to jazz and blues music.
Students will have the opportunity to attend hands-on workshops in writing poetry, fiction and nonfiction, songwriting, literary analysis and other genres. Teachers may attend the workshops alongside their students.
For more information about the UT Martin Department of English and Modern Foreign Languages, visit www.utm.edu/emfl or contact Dr. Jeffery Longacre at jlongac1@utm.edu or 731-881-7300.
For more information about UT Martin, visit www.utm.edu or call 1-800-829-UTM1 (-8861).
PHOTO: Dr. David Carithers, professor of English, gives instruction during a songwriting session in a previous UT Martin Young Writers Conference. The Young Writers Conference offers hands-on workshops in writing poetry, fiction and nonfiction, songwriting, literary analysis and other genres. This year’s workshop will be held Nov. 7 in the Boling University Center on the UT Martin main campus.
