Since its inception in 1994, the Southern Women Writers Conference has been devoted to showcasing the works of well-known and emerging U.S. southern women writers, expanding the literary canon, and developing critical and theoretical understandings of the tradition of southern women’s writing.
Due to reduced resources, this will be the last SWWC, at least for the foreseeable future. In keeping with this milestone, and with the knowledge that all conclusions constitute new inceptions, our theme for the 2012 conference is “Beginnings and Endings.” Through their writing, southern women past and present have addressed both literal and metaphorical “beginnings’ and “endings” in a variety of ways. The theme certainly conjures up images of births, deaths, and rebirths and the emotions often associated with those images: joy, excitement, sadness, grief, anxiety, hesitancy, a sense of freedom, relief, hope. And while positive feelings are usually associated with beginnings and negative ones with endings, is this always the case? Might endings be celebratory and beginnings sorrowful? To what degree might “newness” spring from passings? We invite critical and creative submissions that explore the full range of the conference theme explored by women in and of the South, including but not limited to:
-literary eras and genres
-writers’ careers, relationships, projects, and lives
-social and political institutions
-migrations and diasporas
-nationalisms
-communities and ecosystems
-critical methodologies
-narrative forms
-canonical and non-canonical works of fiction, poetry, autobiography, creative nonfiction, and drama
-non-discursive works including film, photography, and other visual or performance arts
Critical Submissions: Please send 300-word abstracts or completed papers that can be read aloud in twenty minutes. If submitting a proposal for a panel, please include the names of participants and abstracts for individual papers. Male scholars are encouraged to participate.
Creative submissions: Please submit creative work (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or drama), appropriate to the conference’s thematic focus, for a twenty-minute reading. Authors should be women who meet at least one of the following criteria: were born in or grew up in the U.S. South; currently live in the U.S. South; write about the U.S. South.
All submissions should be postmarked no later than Monday, April 9, 2012 and may be sent via e-mail as attachments in MS Word format to swwc@berry.edu or by regular mail to: Southern Women Writers Conference; Berry College; Box 490350; Mt. Berry, GA 30149. Requests for multi-media equipment should accompany submissions. For more information, visit the conference website at http://www.berry.edu/academics/humanities/english/swwc/.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For inquiries: swwc@berry.edu
For submissions: swwc@berry.edu
Website: http://www.berry.edu/academics/humanities/english/swwc/
This blog is no longer updated. Please instead visit Writers For Diversity for new opportunities for women/ LGBT writers and writers of color. Thank you.
