CONFERENCESCENE

1 The Muse and the Marketplace

Explore new perspectives at this long-running conference, which enthusiastically embraces LGBTQ writers and authors of color.

April 5–7, 2019. The Boston Park Plaza Hotel, Boston. $535; $395 for single day attendance. Opportunities available for an additional fee include critique meetings with editors and agents, and a “Shop Talk Happy Hour,” which allows writers to “We’re known as an artistically rigorous but unabashedly fun conference, with a finger on the pulse of what writers need today,” Conference Director Sonya Larson says. “Christopher Castellani set this vision when he founded the conference 18 years ago, emphasizing both the ‘muse’ and ‘marketplace’ sides of the writer’s life.” 900. Novelists Andre Dubus III (), Min Jin Lee (), Daniel José Older (), Christopher Castellani (), Celeste Ng (), Whitney Scharer () and Steve Almond (); short story writers and essayists Nafissa Thompson-Spires (), Jabari Asim () and Neel Patel ); many others. The event will feature more than 130 sessions and conversations, including “She’s Terrible and I Love Her: On ‘Unlikable’ Female Characters” and “Writing While Multilingual: How to Leverage Your Languages for Strong Fiction.” In addition, the conference offers the popular Writers of Color track, which addresses craft and publishing issues that writers of color uniquely encounter. Plan a visit to Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House in nearby Concord, Mass., where she wrote in 1868—just a 45-minute drive from Boston.