Annual Writers Conference
Celebrating 49 years
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Wyoming Writers, Inc. annual conference is in the works with some amazing faculty lined up to learn from! Check back to this page for updates on what's new with this year's conference as we celebrate 49 years of writing community in Wyoming.
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Faculty (including attending agents and publishers)
Matt Mason has run poetry workshops in Botswana, Romania, Nepal, and Belarus for the U.S. State Department and his poetry has appeared in The New York Times. Matt is the Nebraska State Poet and has received a Pushcart Prize as well as fellowships from the Academy of American Poets and the Nebraska Arts Council. His work can be found on NPR’s Morning Edition, in American Life in Poetry, and in several hundred other publications. Mason's 4th book, At the Corner of Fantasy and Main: Disneyland, Midlife and Churros, was released by The Old Mill Press in 2022. Find more at: https://matt.midverse.com/
Angie Hodapp is the Director of Literary Development at Nelson Literary Agency. She holds a BA in English and secondary education from the University of Northern Colorado and an MA in English and communication development from Colorado State University. A graduate of the Publishing Institute at the University of Denver, she has worked in professional writing, editing, and education for more than twenty years. A frequent presenter at writing conferences and events, and the author of Query Craft and Do You Need a Literary Agent, she loves helping writers improve their craft and learn about the ever-changing world of publishing.
William Missouri Downs started as a script secretary on the NBC show Moonlighting (Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd) and worked his way up to staff writer on the NBC sitcom My Two Dads (Paul Reiser). He also sold episodes of Amen (Sherman Hemsley) and Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air (Will Smith). In addition, he sold a movie to Ron Howard’s Imagine Films and optioned a TV pilot to Hollywood producer Meryl Poster. William is also a playwright - Orlando Shakespeare, San Diego Rep, The Kennedy Center, and Berkeley Rep are a few of the over 300 theatres in the US that have produced his plays. He has had international productions in Spain, Canada, South Africa, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, UAE, Austria, Israel, India, and South Korea. He’s won numerous playwriting awards, including rolling premieres from the National New Play Network and he’s twice been a finalist at the Eugene O’Neill. In addition, he’s published 12 plays and four books, including The Art Of Theatre (Cengage), Screenplay: Writing the Picture (Silman James), and Naked Playwriting (Silman James). He has two MFAs, one in screenwriting from UCLA and one in acting from the University of Illinois. He’s directed over forty plays and acted in twenty-five.
Bestselling author Bernadette Marie began writing in the eighth grade. She sent off her epic family saga at the age of sixteen, but it was years before she would publish, finding her home in contemporary romance, and at the top of the charts.
The married mother of five sons promises romances with a Happily Ever After always…and says she can write it because she lives it. She also claims that her books are the antidote to anything heavy you might read.
Obsessed with the art of writing and the business of publishing, chronic entrepreneur Bernadette Marie established her own publishing house, 5 Prince Publishing, in 2011 to bring her own work to market as well as offer an opportunity for fresh voices in fiction to find a home as well. To date she has published the works of over sixty authors.
When not immersed in the literary world, Bernadette Marie can be found spending time with her family, traveling, and running multiple businesses. An avid martial artist, Bernadette Marie is a second degree black belt and certified instructor in Tang Soo Do. A lover of a good stout craft beer, she might also have an unhealthy addiction to chocolate.
Nina McConigley was born in Singapore and raised in Wyoming. She earned her MA from the University of Wyoming, and her MFA at the University of Houston. Her short-story collection Cowboys and East Indians was the winner of the 2014 PEN Open Book Award and a High Plains Book Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Orion, O, Oprah Magazine, Parents, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Short Fiction, and The Asian American Literary Reviewamong others. She teaches at Colorado State University and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. In 2019-2020, was the Walter Jackson Bate fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and is a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Creative Writing Fellowship.