News and Information
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: May 19, 1999
Contact: Deb Hammacher, Assistant Director

Emory's Creative Writing Program Hosts Summer Writers' Institute

Aspiring and practicing authors interested in honing their fiction writing skills will be interested in attending Emory University's Summer Writers' Institute on Tuesdays and Thursdays from June 28-Aug. 5. Presented by Emory's Creative Writing Program, the summer session is a fiction workshop conducted by award-winning novelist and poet Judson Mitcham designed to develop and sharpen the writer's skills as editor of his or her own work. Participants must apply through the Office of Admissions by Friday, May 28. To request an application, call 404-727-6036.

The institute is a four-credit course that places special emphasis on the process of revision and the practice of reading as a writer. In addition to the classes, students will have individual conferences with Mitcham. Participants in the annual Summer Writers' Festival held in conjunction with institute also will take part in class discussions with the students.

The writers participating in this year's festival, held July 20-22, are novelist Jim Shepard, poet Kevin Young, fiction writer Beth Lordan and poet Mark Jarman. Mitcham will moderate a panel discussion with the writers.

Mitcham is the recipient of the 1998 Townsend Prize and a finalist for the Southern Book Award for his novel The Sweet Everlasting. He is the author of Somewhere in Ecclesiastes, a collection of poems that won the Devins Award from the University of Missouri Press. Mitcham is chairman of the psychology department at Fort Valley State College and adjunct professor of creative writing at Emory and at the University of Georgia.

The Summer Writers' Festival readings and panel discussion are free and open to the public. The cost of the Summer Writers' Institute is $2,732. For more information on the institute or the Creative Writing Program at Emory University, call 404-727-4683.