May 29-June 1, 2014
Tucson, Arizona
Pima Community College
The Workshop
The Pima Writers’ Workshop, May 29-June 1, is for all writers, beginning and experienced. The workshop offers opportunities to talk and consult with professional writers and agents, as well as to write.
Cost
$150 (includes manuscript consultation)
Registration Deadlines
Register by May 15 (to have a manuscript reviewed) or by May 29.
Registration

Register for noncredit course WR 705 (CRN 61655).
• Register online
Go to www.pima.edu/continuinged
– Click on “Register and Pay” on the tool bar located on the left hand side of the web page
• By phone at (520) 206-6468
For More Information
Meg Files, Pima Writers’ Workshop Director
(520) 206-6084. Email: mfiles@pima.edu
Location
Pima Community College
Center for the Arts, West Campus
2202 W. Anklam Rd., Tucson AZ
Manuscripts
There is no extra fee for a manuscript consultation.
(1) Submit one manuscript
• Electronic submission (preferred): mfiles@pima.edu
(subject heading: Pima
Writers’ Workshop Submission)
• Mail: Meg Files
Pima Community College West Campus
2202 W. Anklam Rd., Tucson AZ 85709-0170
(2) Deadline: Manuscript must be received by May
15.

(3) Prose manuscripts must be typed, doublespaced, and no longer than 15 pages. For book excerpts, include a brief synopsis. For poetry, submit up to three poems.
(4) Requests for a particular author or agent will be honored on a first-come, first-served basis.
Include a list of your first four choices along with your submission.
The Schedule
7:00 p.m. Meet-the-authors Reception
Riverpark Inn, 350 S. Freeway
Reading by Mark Doty
9:00 a.m. Writing the Very First Word: How to
Begin Any Writing Project
Carmen Giménez Smith
10:30 a.m. • Writing Exercise: The Smallest Short
Story

Diane Glancy
• What Agents Look For (and What You
Should Look for in an Agent)
William Boggess
11:40 a.m. Reading by Colleen McElroy
1:00 p.m. In Favor of Complication
Mark Coty
2:15 p.m. • Researching and Writing Nonfiction
for Young Readers
James M. Deem
• Ask an Editor: Submissions to Literary
Magazines and Small Presses
Colleen McElroy and Carmen Jiménez
Smith
3:30 p.m. • The Current State of Self-Publishing
Bruce Fulton
• Writing Exercise: What You Don’t
Know about Your Characters, Your Plot, Your Self
Sarah Cortez

7:00 p.m. Readings by Sarah Cortez, James M.
Deem, and Diane Glancy
9:00 a.m. • Memoir: Memory and Imagination
Colleen McElroy
• Everything You Wanted to Know
About Literary Agents
Laura Strachen
10:15 a.m. • Writing Triage: Practical Revision
Strategies
Sarah Jiménez Smith
• Query Workshop
William Boggess
11:30 a.m. Reading
Thomas Cobb
1:00 p.m. Build a Book
Diane Glancy
2:15 p.m. • The Generative Sentence
Thomas Cobb

• Exercise: Pitch Perfect: Getting the
Attention of the Best Possible Agents for Your Work
Dara Hyde
3:30 p.m. • It’s Not a Gene: Easy Marketing for the
Writer
Terry Filipowicz
• Writing Exercise: Exploring Personal
Motivation in Researching and Writing Nonfiction
James M. Deem
9:00 a.m. Swimming Through the Fiction Writer’s
Great Unknowns
Sarah Cortez
10:15 a.m. • “If I Were Human”: Reflections on One
Hundred Years of War
Johanna Skibsrud
• Roadmap—Putting Together an
Effective Book Proposal
Laura Strachan

11:30 Reading
Carmen Giménez Smith
1:00 p.m. • Reading and Q&A
Nancy Mairs
• Subsidiary What? Understanding
Subrights and How They Can Help Your
Book
Dara Hyde
2:30 p.m. Panel: The Writer’s Evolution
3:30 p.m. Contest Awards
Faculty
William Boggess began his career at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, before working at Barer Literary until
2010. After a stint in editorial at Little, Brown and
Company, where he worked with renowned authors such as Sam Kean, Alan Weisman, Edna O’Brien, and
Tom Wolfe, he has returned to Barer Literary in new
York to represent literary fiction and narrative nonfiction.

Thomas Cobb is the author Crazy Heart, made into an
Academy Award winning film. His novel Shavetail won the Western Writers of America Spur Award and the
Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for fiction. With Blood in Their Eyes won the Spur Award and was named a Southwest Book of the Year by the
Pima County Library Association. His story collection
Acts of Contrition won the George Garrett Award. He is
Professor Emeritus at Rhode Island College.
Sarah Cortez is the author of a memoir, Walking
Home: Growing Up Hispanic in Houston, and two volumes of poems, Cold Blue Steel and How to Undress
a Cop, winner of the PEN Texas Literary Award in poetry. She is an award-winning anthologist of six volumes, including You Don’t Have a Clue: Latino
Mystery Stories for Teens, Windows into My World:
Latino Youth Write Their Lives, and Our Lost Border:
Essays on Life amid the Narco Violence, winner of a
Southwest Book Award.
James M. Deem is the author of numerous books of nonfiction and fiction, including the 2009 Sibert Honor book Bodies from the Ice: Melting Glaciers and the
Recovery of the Past as well as Faces from the Past:
Forgotten People of North America, Bodies from the

Ash: Life and Death in Ancient Pompeii, Bodies from the
Bog, and the novel 3NBs of Julian Drew.
Mark Doty is the author of eight books of poetry, including My Alexandria, which won the National Book
Critics Circle Award; Sweet Machine; Source; School of
the Arts; and Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, winner of the National Book Award. He is the author of three memoirs: the bestselling Dog Years, Firebird, and
Heaven’s Coast, as well as a book about craft and criticism, The Art of Description: World Into Word, and a book-length essay, Still Life with Oysters and Lemon.
Terry Filipowicz is the founder, editor, and writer of the website and writing project Sip and Go. She has spent most of her career as a television news writer and producer. She has been a supervising producer/writer for KVOA4 TV, where she produced content for the website and social media. She has been public relations writer at California State University and executive producer and senior associate news producer at KOVR13 TV.
Bruce Fulton is Assistant Professor and coordinator of the Digital Information Management Certificate program at the University of Arizona School of
Information Resources and Library Science. He is

acting director of the UA Research Group on Nontraditional Publishing Practices, which studies and tracks self-publishing (author and entrepreneurial publishing), digital printing and print-on-demand, ebooks, and more. His research interests include author web and social media presence.
Diane Glancy is the author of many books including
No Word for the Sea: A Novel of Alzheimer’s, The
Reasons for Crows: A Novel of Kateri Tetakwitha,
Pushing the Bear: After the Trail of Tears, Stone Heart:
A Novel of Sacajawea, Designs of the Night Sky: Native
Storiers, The Mask Maker, The Only Piece of Furniture in
the House, and Firesticks: A Collection of Stories. Her latest books are Stories of the Driven World and It Was
Then. She has won two NEA fellowships.
Dara Hyde is a literary agent at the Hill Nadell
Literary Agency in Los Angeles. She spent over a decade in publishing, working as an editor and later the permissions and rights manager at Grove Atlantic where she worked with award-winning and bestselling authors including Sherman Alexie, Ana
Menéndez, and Frances Itani. She represents literary and genre fiction, narrator nonfiction, graphic novels, memoir and the occasional young adult novel.

Nancy Mairs’ books include Plaintext; Carnal Acts;
Voice Lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer;
Remembering the Bone House: An Erotics of Place and
Space; Ordinary Time: Cycles in Marriage, Faith, and
Renewal; Waist-High in the World: A Life Among the
Nondisabled; a Western States Book Award-winning volume of poetry, In All the Rooms of the Yellow House; and A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories.
Colleen J. McElroy is the author of nine poetry collections, including Sleeping with the Moon, which was awarded a PEN/Oakland National Literary Award, and her newest, Here I Throw Down My Heart. She has received the Before Columbus American Book Award, two Fulbright Research Fellowships, and NEA
Fellowships in both fiction and poetry. She is professor emeritus at the University of Washington and the former editor of the Seattle Review.
Johanna Skibsrud is the author of This Will Be
Difficult to Explain: And Other Stories and two books of poetry, Late Nights with Wild Cowboys and I Do Not
Think That I Could Love a Human Being, shortlisted for the 2011 Atlantic Poetry Prize. She is the winner of the 2008 Scotiabank Giller prize for her novel The
Sentimentalists. Her stories have appeared in many publications including Zoetrope and Glimmertrain.

Carmen Jiménez Smith is the author of a memoir,
Bring Down the Little Birds, and four poetry collections
—Milk and Filth; Goodbye, Flicker; The City She Was; and Odalisque in Pieces. She is the recipient of a 2011
American Book Award, the 2011 Juniper Prize for
Poetry, and a 2011-2012 fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Howard Foundation. She teaches at New Mexico State University, while serving as the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Puerto del Sol and the publisher of Noemi Press.
Laura Strachan is a literary agent and principal of
Strachan Literary Agency, a boutique literary agency that focuses on literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, which she founded in 1998. A licensed attorney, she is a popular speaker on the publishing industry and legal issues for writers. She is a member of both the
Maryland and District of Columbia Bars, as well as the
Author’s Guild. She was cited in Poets & Writers magazine as one of “21 Agents You Should Know.”