HCTC Writers Conference hosts Horror Writer: Author C.S. Johnson to host three horror writing workshops
Hazard Community and Technical College hosts its 13th annual Spring Writers Conference on Friday, May 1. This series of workshops is offered to anyone interested in writing. Author C.S. Johnson will offer three sessions on horror writing, a first for the conference.
“Writing conferences are a great way for people to share information, and hopefully those who attend can walk away with new, useful information. I’m excited because this is the first writer’s conference I’ve seen that offers horror workshops,” noted Ms. Johnson.
“A lot of times conferences like this don’t make room for genre writing. We wanted to change that. We wanted to give an opportunity to those folks who like to read horror fiction and those who like to write it,” explained Donna Sparkman, faculty advisor for the student literary magazine Kudzu at HCTC.
Author Carisa Star (C.S.) Johnson grew up in the hills of East Tennessee and said she was raised on campfires, ghost stories, and folk tales. Her work has appeared at
DemonMinds.com, in Writer’s Post Journal, Neo-Opsis Science Fiction Magazine, and she will appear in the anthology Sleeping with the Undead. Her first novel, The Watching, was published in 2007.
Johnson discussed what people could expect from her sessions on May 1. “I’d like to try and pinpoint what makes a good ‘Horror’ story, giving examples of ways to take an old theme and renew it. I also want to give general writing tips, ones that I spent a lot of time finding on my own, wishing someone would have told me sooner.”
The workshops will be held three times throughout the day simultaneously at 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. & 2:30 p.m. The Conference is sponsored by HCTC and funded in part by the Mountain Writing Project, The Hampton Inn of Hazard, and Buckhorn Lake State Resort Park.
Offering advice to beginning writers, Johnson said, “The most important thing is don’t give up. In the face of rejections, criticisms, lack of time, trials of life, whatever may come: don’t give up!”