On Saturday Oct. 22, the Willits-Hallowell Center hosted the 25th annual WriteAngles Conference. The conference’s goal is to promote communication among writers. “Writing is a solitary job,” conference coordinator Daisy Mathias said. “[Writers] love to hear other writers talk about writing and they love to do so [themselves].”
A group of Pioneer Valley authors founded the fall conference as a way to produce what they viewed as the ideal literary symposium, a discussion run by writers. “Our planning committee changes year to year because of the new people who come in to volunteer,” Mathias said.
The WriteAngles conference takes applications from the local literary community to fill their coordination committee, panels and workshops.
This insular society of writers creates a system of support that authors would usually have trouble finding anywhere else.
“‘I’ve written this. Could you read it?’ To have someone you know has skills is the best benefit to a writer,” said Patricia Lee Lewis, one of the leaders of the “Word Play: Experiments in Poetry” panel. Lewis used an example of peer editing to show how helpful the collaboration of a community of writers can be. She described her literary relationship with fellow writer and panel leader, Diana M. Gordon, as well as Susan Spencer Smith, who graduated from college with Lewis and attended the panel to reconnect with her friend. During the panel, it became apparent that most of the writers in the room were colleagues. As the panel concluded, one of the attendees shouted, “It is so energizing to hang out with other writers!”
The other major draw of the conference was the “How Agents Think” panel and the individual sessions with literary agents. Participants had the opportunity to sign up for a one-on-one session with an agent to discuss their already-written manuscripts, their ideas or networking strategies.
“Writers love the opportunity to hear agents talk about how to get agents,” Mathias said. She also discussed how increasingly difficult the climate for the literary community has become to sell ideas to agents. The afternoon keynote speaker, Valerie Martin, author of The Confession of Edward Day, re-enforced the idea of hard-sell agents in her speech. Her agents were most interested in her historical fiction novels because “they sold the best in comparison to what we called in grad school ‘stories about people who are unhappy in their living room.’”
While there were plenty of writers of all backgrounds represented, one demographic was clearly missing. “Every year, we try to publicize at Mount Holyoke College,” said Mathias. “We don’t have any [student attendees] this year. We would be delighted if they came, but we don’t know why they don’t come.”
Whether Family and Friends Weekend or unreceptiveness to advertising is to blame, there were no college students in attendance, despite the special student application that the committee designed. WriteAngles plans to return to the Center in 2012 and hopes more Mount Holyoke students will attend.
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