Saturday, July 5
10:00 a.m. to noon

Diane Albert, Esq. Peacock Myers, PC

Copyrights, Copylefts, Fair Use, and Rights of Publicity
An Introduction to Copyright Law

What is a copyright? What rights does an author of a creative work possess? Diane Albert will introduce you to copyright protection with an emphasis on the rights of the copyright holder, public access and fair use, and what to do when someone infringes your copyright.

Diane Albert practices with Peacock Myers, P.C. in intellectual property prosecution and related business transactions. She holds a B.S. degree in both Mathematics Education and Metallurgical Engineering from Ohio State University, and M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. She received her J.D. from the UNM School of Law in 2007 and was awarded the Helen S. Carter prize for Outstanding Legal Writing.

Prior to becoming an attorney, Dr. Albert worked as a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Los Alamos, NM where she served as County Councilor for four years. Diane speaks French, Spanish, and Russian and prior to her career at LANL was awarded a post-doctoral research position funded by the French Ministère de l'Education, at Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France. In her spare time, she is an avid bicyclist and teaches indoor group cycle and LIFT at NM Sports & Wellness. She and her fiancé live in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque with their pug Stanley and three cats.

Saturday, July 5
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
$20 for members
$30 for non members
No registration. Pay at the door.

Johnny D. Boggs

SWW Workshop
THE PLOT THICKENS

Plotting can be one of the toughest obstacles in creating a novel. How do you move the story, keep the reader interested (and guessing)? It's like cooking. You have to find the right ingredients. Not too thick. Not too watery. With just enough spice.

Johnny D. Boggs has been praised by Booklist magazine as "among the best western writers at work today�" and is one of the few authors to have won both the Western Heritage Wrangler Award and Spur Award for his fiction. True West magazine has named him the Best Living Fiction Writer in its 2008 Best of the West Awards.

Boggs has three Spur Awards from Western Writers of America, winning for Best Juvenile Western Novel in 2008 for Doubtful Canon, Best Western Novel in 2006 for Camp Ford and for Best Short Fiction in 2002 for "A Piano at Dead Man's Crossing." He won the Western Heritage Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum for Outstanding Western Novel of 2003 for Spark on the Prairie: The Trial of the Kiowa Chiefs. His novels Northfield, The Hart Brand and Ten and Me and his short story "The Cody War" were Spur finalists.

The author of more than 30 books and several short stories, Boggs is also a prolific writer of short nonfiction whose works have appeared in 50 magazines and newspapers. He is a frequent contributor to True West, New Mexico Magazine, Persimmon Hill, Wild West and Boys' Life. His website is www.johnnydboggs.com.

Tuesday, July 15
7 to 9 p.m.

Rich Reichman

The Elevator Pitch

Increasingly, writers have to be able to pitch their ideas on the spot. Learn how to pitch your project in minutes (if not seconds).

"The Elevator Pitch is both exciting and frightening at the same time. Mostly I can only give hints and examples of how it's supposed to work, and then show by having people actually pitch and give them feedback," Rich said.

Rich Reichman's students have sold to Fox, Warner Brothers, HBO, Showtime, all the major networks, and to such recent shows as "Crossing Jordan" and "New Amsterdam", to name a few. His students have also sold novels, short stories, plays, and nonfiction by using the techniques they learned in his screenwriting classes.

Saturday, August 2
10:00 a.m. to noon

Mark David Gerson

Living Your Creativity:
Secrets to Effortless & Powerful Writing

Living your passion for writing and writing your passion for a living involve pretty much the same principles and precepts. And the secrets to effortless and powerful writing are not really secrets at all. Join Mark David as he explores with you his "Thirteen Rules for Writing" and reveals to you the secrets you knew all along.

Mark David Gerson has taught writing as a creative and spiritual pursuit for more than 15 years in the U.S. and Canada. Through classes, workshops, coaching and consulting, Mark David has guided groups and individuals to connect with their innate wisdom, open to their creative power and express themselves with ease. Poets and playwrights, novelists and educators, amateurs and professionals, people who don't believe they can write and people with a compelling call to write — have all benefited from working with him, as have nonwriters seeking to move through life's challenges and awaken to their highest potential.

Mark David is the award-winning author of The MoonQuest: A True Fantasy and of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write, a book of writing instruction, inspiration and practice. He has also recorded The Voice of the Muse Companion, a 2-CD set of guided meditations for writers. Mark David's free inspirational newsletter is read in more than two dozen countries.

Saturday, August 2
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
$20 for members
$30 for non members
No registration. Pay at the door.

Bob Gassaway

SWW Workshop
Think Before You Write

The words we choose -- whether right or wrong -- color our writing, give it tone and texture. This workshop focuses on common errors writers make in choosing their words and arranging them. It will look at the bad habits we learn from television news, examine the flaws in some currently popular phrases, explore common grammar errors, and review important rules of punctuation for writers.

Bob Gassaway writes fiction and non-fiction and teaches workshops on writing. He is co-editor of Dirty Work, a 2007 non-fiction book focusing on occupations and professions that impart social taint to their practitioners. He wrote the chapters on crime scene investigators and forensic pathologists based on his research as a sociologist. He has worked in radio and television news, for newspapers in Texas, Missouri and New Mexico, and for The Associated Press. He is writing his second mystery novel.

Tuesday, August 19
7 to 9 p.m.

Peggy Spencer, MD and Sheila Key

Toys in the Attic & Other Diversions
Or
How a Couple of ‘Accidental Coauthors’ Got Out of Their Box and Let the Muses In

Establishing a plan for the article or book you’re writing is never a bad idea, of course, but — have you noticed? Sometimes the project seems to have ideas of its own. Hark! Could that be the prancing and pawing of Muses in the attic? Authors Sheila Key and Peggy Spencer, MD, will discuss the wild, wonderful (and, at times, worrisome) Magic that intruded early and often during the writing of their book, 50 Ways to Leave Your 40s: Living It Up in Life’s Second Half, and how these (take your pick) divine interventions and/or chaotic upheavals resulted in a much better book. Listen! If these two women — a couple of opposites who didn’t even meet until halfway through “50/40’s” development — could manage to go with the flow, then so can you. Sheila and Peggy will share some ideas for knocking a few holes into that writer’s box of yours – so your Muses can breathe!

Peggy Spencer has a B.A. degree from the University of California Santa Cruz and an MD from the University of Arizona. She completed a residency at the University of New Mexico, is board certified in Family Medicine, and is currently employed at UNM as staff physician at the Student Health Center and adjunct faculty at the School of Medicine. Winner of the SouthWest Writers 2006 Best Essay award, she writes a column for the New Mexico Daily Lobo newspaper answering reader-submitted health questions, and contributes articles to UNM Parent Matters and UNM Today. Peg is married with two children and lives in Albuquerque. She celebrates her 50th birthday this year.

Sheila Key is a “Best of Show” award-winning writer (San Diego Press Club, 1991) and graphic designer who has freelanced for publications ranging from corporate business journals to New Age magazines to anthologies of poetry and art. Sheila also worked in radio for ten years, including stints as a rock DJ at commercial stations in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Most of Sheila’s broadcast work has been in the noncommercial realm, however, including jobs at NPR affiliates and community radio stations in North Dakota (her native stomping ground), Wisconsin, West Virginia, Tucson, and San Diego. Sheila settled in Albuquerque in 1994, when her husband, Richard Towne, was appointed general manager of public radio station KUNM 89.9 FM. The two live with their two children in Albuquerque’s North Valley, where Sheila micro-gardens and produces home-canned pickles and jams.

Notably, it was SouthWest Writers’ 2003 writing contest that got Sheila started on developing the book proposal for 50 WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR 40s. She won 2nd place in SWW’s nonfiction-book category that year and—alas!—3rd place with it the next, but by then the proposal was ready to pitch, and New World Library signed on almost immediately. Thanks, SouthWest Writers!!!

Saturday, September 6
10:00 a.m. to noon

Patricia Moosbrugger

WORKING WITH A LITERARY AGENT

We all know that more and more publishers say they won't look at unrepresented books, they have to come through a literary agent. Just what does a literary agent do and what can an author expect from the relationship? From the initial agency agreement to the selling process and beyond, Patricia Moosbrugger will explain what it means to work with an agent and what authors can expect from the relationship.

Patricia Moosbrugger is a literary agent who relocated to Albuquerque a year and half ago after 18 years in the New York publishing world. She represents fiction and narrative nonfiction with several national bestsellers. She will discuss the role of the agent and what authors can expect from working with an agent in today's market.

Saturday, September 6
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
$20 for members
$30 for non members
No registration. Pay at the door.

Carolee Dean

SWW Workshop
Unforgettable Sentences

A journey of a thousand pages begins with a single line. In this workshop we will explore how to create unforgettable opening lines that immediately set a tone for your story, raise dramatic questions, establish setting, voice, genre and character—all in a handful of words. We will discuss ending lines and thematic statements that resonate with the reader long after the end of the story. Finally, we will examine how to build character, establish themes, weave in set ups and payoffs, all with a few strategically placed sentences.

Carolee Dean holds a Master’s Degree in Communicative Disorders from the University of New Mexico and currently works as a speech-language pathologist in the Albuquerque Public Schools. Her first novel, Comfort, published by Houghton Mifflin, was named the Best Young Adult Novel of 2002 by the Texas Institute of Letters and was nominated as an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. She teaches creative writing for young people at the Sandia Preparatory School Summer Program, has taught Scientific Writing for Teens through the Dream Catcher Science Program sponsored by Sandia Labs and is a frequent guest speaker at schools, workshops and conferences.

Saturday, October 4
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
$20 for members
$30 for non members
No registration. Pay at the door.

Lynn C. Miller, Ph.D

SWW Workshop
Generative writing Workshop

For writers of all levels, this workshop allows participants to begin new projects. Writing in a community creates a powerful synergy and allows many writers to explore new territory. Through specific exercises, the group will explore various ways of generating new work. This is a place to try out new forms and approaches, not a critique session for already-produced work. In addition to drawing upon my work and research into the performance of autobiography, we will use techniques developed by the Amherst Writers and Artists method which emphasizes positive feedback and honors each writer's privacy and process. In discussion, all work is treated as fiction, releasing each writer’s creative process and keeping the class focus on the writing rather than the writer.

Lynn C. Miller is author of the novels The Fool’s Journey (2002) and Death of a Department Chair (2006) and co-editor of Voices Made Flesh: Performing Women’s Autobiography (2003). Over the past two decades, she has served as a guest artist at dozens of universities, art museums, and festivals, touring performances of Edith Wharton, Gertrude Stein, and Katherine Anne Porter and conducting writing/performance workshops. In fall of 2007 she left the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a professor in women’s studies and theatre, to found WriteSpace International in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she coaches individuals and groups in writing and developing creative approaches to thinking and life change.

Tuesday, October 21
7 to 9 p.m.

Chris Eboch

Conference Networking: Getting the Most from a Writing Conference

Attending writing conferences is a great way to meet other writers, learn new skills, get tips about industry trends -- and maybe even connect with an editor or agent. But to get the most from the experience, you need to be prepared and go in with the right attitude. This workshop will show you how!

Chris Eboch is the New Mexico Regional Advisor for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. As such, she has coordinated five conferences and attended many others. She has published over 100 articles for children and adults, including “How to Succeed at a Conference” in Writer’s Digest.

Chris is the author of The Well of Sacrifice (Clarion Books), a middle grade historical adventure set in ninth century Guatemala. Kirkus Reviews called The Well of Sacrifice, “[An] engrossing first novel….[with] a brave, likable and determined heroine.”

Chris’s latest books are dramatic and inspirational biographies, Jesse Owens: Young Record Breaker and Milton Hershey: Young Chocolatier, both with Simon & Schuster's Childhood of Famous Americans series.

See her website at www.chriseboch.com.