By PATRICIA PIXLER, Student Reporter
Oct.15, the Nimrod Writing Conference, for Readers and Writers 2016, was held in Tulsa. Members of the Writer’s Roundtable, the creative writing club on the Alva campus, were in attendance, including: Dawn Allen, faculty sponsor; Patricia Pixler, club president; Don Tripp, club vice-president; and club member Sam Ruttman. Also at the conference was Northwestern alumni and former Writer’s Roundtable member, Nathan Sacket of Tulsa.
The conference is held annually, at the Tulsa University campus, by the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, an organization whose purpose is to discover, develop and promote new writing. Nimrod does this through their twice-yearly journals, their annual Nimrod awards and their annual writers’ conference, in October.
The one-day conference offers classes on writing, editing and publishing by professionals within the industry. The professionals are invited, from across the United States, to head panels, teach classes and give readings of their work. Conference attendees select a morning panel to attend, a morning master class and an afternoon master class. In addition to this, they provided a lunch, and offered the opportunity to listen to the readings, by the invited authors.
This year, the five morning classes and six afternoon classes included “Dialogue and Code-Switching in Fiction,” “Publishing 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Getting Your Work Out There,” “Mystery: The Fine Art of the Fight Scene,” among others. Writer’s Roundtable attendees based their classes around their interests, or in areas they believed they could improve upon. This included the aforementioned dialogue and fight scene classes, as well as classes on poetry, romance and young adult fantasy.
This has been the first conference, the Writer’s Roundtable, has attended but it will not be the last. “The Nimrod Conference for Readers and Writers at TU in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was a dynamic opportunity for members of Writer’s Roundtable to engage with other writers and attend sessions on the craft of writing,” Allen, Instructor of English and published writer, said. “We look forward to more conference and workshop opportunities as a club.”
Given the busy schedule the conference offers, attendance usually costs $60 but each Northwestern student received a scholarship, from Nimrod that dropped their attendance price to $10. This increased incentive for members to attend, knowing it was an opportunity that does not come to students too often during the school year.
Writer’s Roundtable Vice President Tripp, explains the experience as, “Attending the writer’s conference at Tulsa University was a great experience,” Writer’s Roundtable Vice President Tripp, said. “I’m grateful to Mrs. Allen for taking us, and for sharing her expertise in writing and publishing with the Writer’s Roundtable. The conference was an opportunity for us, as writers, to connect with others who share our passions for personal expression through the written word.”
For more information about the Writer’s Roundtable, please contact Dawn Allen at dfallen@nwosu.edu, or Patricia Pixler at plpixler17@rangers.nwosu.edu.