Genre: Creative Nonfiction

Central Coast Writers’ Conference

The Central Coast Writers’ Conference will be held on September 25 and September 26 at the Cuesta College San Luis Obispo, California, campus. Programming includes master classes, breakout sessions, panels, meet and greets, keynote addresses, and book signings for poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers.

Type: 
CONFERENCE
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
no
Event Date: 
September 25, 2026
Rolling Admissions: 
no
Application Deadline: 
July 9, 2026
Financial Aid?: 
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
June 8, 2026
Free Admission: 
no
Contact Information: 

Central Coast Writers’ Conference, P.O. Box 8106, San Luis Obispo, CA 93403. (805) 610-4252. Meagan Friberg, Director.

Meagan Friberg
Director
Contact City: 
San Luis Obispo
Contact State: 
CA
Contact Zip / Postal Code: 
93405
Country: 
US
Genre: 
Poetry
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction

Atticus Hotel Artist-in-Residency Program

The Atticus Hotel Artist-in-Residency Program offers residencies of four days, one week, or two weeks from November 15 to April 1 at the Atticus Hotel in downtown McMinnville, Oregon, to poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers. Residents are provided a room with a fireplace, complementary espresso, and other hotel amenities including a fitness room and the option to use the drawing room or board room as a work space. One meal credit a day at the hotel’s onsite Mediterranean-inspired restaurant, Cypress, is provided. Travel and other expenses are not included.

Type: 
RESIDENCY
Ignore Event Date Field?: 
no
Event Date: 
November 15, 2026
Rolling Admissions: 
no
Application Deadline: 
July 31, 2026
Financial Aid?: 
no
Financial Aid Application Deadline: 
June 8, 2026
Free Admission: 
yes
Contact Information: 

Atticus Hotel Artist-in-Residency Program, 375 NE Ford Street, McMinnville, OR 97128. (503) 472-1975. Erin Stephenson, Co-owner. 

Erin Stephenson
Co-owner
Contact City: 
McMinnville
Contact State: 
OR
Contact Zip / Postal Code: 
97128
Country: 
US
Genre: 
Poetry
Fiction
Creative Nonfiction

Fictional Poetic Memoir

The Time Is Now
6.4.26

While the late Keith Waldrop described his 1993 book, Light While There Is Light: An American History, reissued by New York Review Books Classics in May, as a “fictional memoir,” Dalkey Archive Press, which reissued the book in 2013, referred to it as an “autobiographical novel,” and elsewhere it’s been described as a “poetic memoir.” This week, compose three short pieces about one single memory, each one to be described by one of these hybrid labels. How does your fusion of fiction and nonfiction shift when you’re thinking about the genre of your work in a different way? What kind of permission is granted when you add on a more imaginative modifier, such as “fictional” or “poetic”—and how does the “autobiographical” prefix work in tandem or in tension with a fictional element in place?

Rewrite the Script

The Time Is Now
5.28.26

In her debut memoir, Everything I Know About Love (Penguin Books, 2018), Dolly Alderton recounts her twenties through the lens of friendship, romantic confusion, and the gradual shedding of illusions. Along the way, she questions the stories she grew up believing about what love should look like, how adulthood should feel, and what it means to be fulfilled. “I blame my high expectations for love on two things: the first is that I am the child of parents who are almost embarrassingly infatuated with each other; the second is the films I watched in my formative years,” writes Alderton. Write about an expectation you inherited about love, success, marriage, adulthood, or happiness. Who set that expectation and how did it take root? Describe a moment when reality didn’t live up to your expectations and how this shifted your understanding of what you truly want.

Minda Honey: The Heartbreak Years

Caption: 

“It’s the women in my life who have held a steady glow for me.” In this video, Minda Honey reads from her memoir, The Heartbreak Years (Little A, 2023), and speaks about cultural expectations of women and long-term relationships with co-hosts Christina Fisanick and Damian Dressick for this event from the Writers Association of Northern Appalachia. For more from Honey, read “The Joy of the Tortured Artist: Why We Write, Even When We Hate to Write” featured in the May/June 2026 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Genre: 
Creative Nonfiction
Tags: 
Minda Honey
The Heartbreak Years
memoir
Little A
Writers Association of Northern Appalachia
May/June 2026

Community

The Time Is Now
5.21.26

How has community served you? Whether literary community or a community found through hobbies and activities, or racial, ethnic, cultural, gender, and sexual identities, there are many ways in which these communities provide the support and resources missing from one’s life. In Parul Sehgal’s recent interview with Sarah Schulman published in the Paris Review’s Art of Nonfiction series, she says: “My whole life has taken place in community, in the gay community. Community saved my life. It’s the official structures, family and all that, that have been my problem.” Write a personal essay that explores various communities you participate in. Compare and contrast what you have found valuable in them versus the social and institutional structures imposed upon you via family, government, economy, education, and religion. With whom has your life taken place?

Temporality

The Time Is Now
5.14.26

“I told a friend that I had missed a flight to Europe (again) and she assured me that it was just my ‘queer relationship to temporality.’ I did not really know what that meant, but I liked the sound of it,” writes Stephanie Wambugu in her essay “Running Behind,” a meditation on her relationship with lateness and punctuality, recently published by Granta magazine. Consider your own habits of showing up early, on time, or late to meetings, appointments, shared meals, and other assignations. Wambugu writes that on one occasion, her lateness was “an act of passive resistance” and “an expression of my disdain.” How would you characterize your priorities when you arrive late? How might your relationship to temporality be based on how you were raised or your intentions to subvert certain cultural norms?

Music and Me

The Time Is Now
5.7.26

“When you mention music, you want that music to do the atmosphere work for you. But it’s really tricky,” says Sophie Strohmeier about linking music, compositions, and instruments to the characters in her novella All Girls Be Mine Alone (Joyland Publishing, 2025), in an interview for the Creative Independent. “It was more like creating a material palette with the evocation of what each instrument might convey.” Focus on infusing a scene in either a new personal essay or a work-in-progress with music. Allow the music to do the work of adding a fresh dimension to the atmosphere and recollection of your memories. You might recall the types of songs that would have been playing in your setting or brainstorm the sounds and instruments that most effectively convey the mindset or emotions of the people present in your retelling.

Origins of Conflict

The Time Is Now
4.30.26

Can we learn how to avoid conflict by studying the behavior of other animals? A recent New York Times article reported that in the last decade or so, a group of chimpanzees in the forests of Uganda experienced an unprecedented uptick in large-scale violence, prompting scientists to question the origins of this civil warfare and consider whether these types of violent conflicts are a part of human evolution. Compose a personal essay that reflects on your thoughts about conflict, whether it be a large-scale conflict in the country you live in or more intimate between friends and family. How can sorting through your own beliefs and emotions help you reach new understandings about human social relations and behavior?

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