WCoNA, the Writers’ Conference of Northern Appalachia®, is pleased to announce that local Pittsburgh authors Gabriel Welsch, Brittany Hailer, and Caitlyn Hunter will be presenters at the WCoNA writing conference March 11-13, 2022, to be held at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA.
The three writers all have published books recently with award-winning independent press Tolsun Books, and will read from their respective works. Tolsun Books has published more authors from the Pittsburgh writing community than from any other locale outside of Flagstaff, where the nonprofit is based.
The conference will feature 24 workshops and presentations all day Saturday and Sunday morning on topics such as writing historical fiction, finding your voice, Pittsburgh authors, book reviews, magical realism in Appalachia, storytelling, character development and dialogue, writing about place and culture, and poetry writing.
ABOUT THE WRITERS
Gabriel Welsch’s first collection of short stories, “Groundscratchers,” was published by Tolsun Books in October 2021. He also is the author of four collections of poems: “The Four Horsepersons of a Disappointing Apocalypse,” “The Death of Flying Things,” “An Eye Fluent in Gray” and “Dirt and All Its Dense Labor.” His work has appeared widely in national journals as well as on Verse Daily and in the nationally syndicated newspaper column “American Life in Poetry.” Welsch has lived the majority of his life in Appalachian locales, from West Virginia to western Massachusetts to central PA. He now lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with his family, and works as vice president of marketing and communications at Duquesne University.
Brittany Hailer is Visiting Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh. Her memoir and poetry collection “Animal You’ll Surely Become” was published by Tolsun Books in 2018. In 2020, she received a Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania for an essay she wrote about her experience investigating the opioid crisis while her father struggled with homelessness and alcoholism. For her stories of people affected by the opioid epidemic, she received a 2019 Golden Quill Award from the Press Club of Western Pennsylvania and a Robert L. Vann Award of Excellence for investigative/ enterprise reporting from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation. In 2018, Brittany was selected to be a Justice Reporting Fellow as part of the John Jay/Langeloth Foundation Fellowship on “Reinventing Solitary Confinement” and again in 2020 for “Justice and the Pandemic.” Since then, she has investigated how the pandemic has impacted the Allegheny County Jail, including the jail’s kitchen, its COVID-19 mitigation efforts and isolation of the sick, and the deaths of those incarcerated at the Allegheny County Jail.
Caitlyn Hunter serves as one of the inaugural Emerging Black Writers in Residence at Chatham University. Hunter also is a current doctoral student in the English Department at Duquesne University where she focuses on African American literature and Black Food studies. She holds an MFA from Chatham University. She currently lives in Pittsburgh PA. Her book, ‘Power in the Tongue,” is forthcoming with Tolsun Books in 2022.
WCoNA CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
The conference will feature keynote speakers Lee Gutkind, Vanity Fair’s “Godfather behind creative nonfiction,” and Edgar Award-nominated novelist Kathleen George.
Lee Gutkind is the author and editor of more than 30 books and a recipient of grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, the Heinz Endowments and others. He has also appeared on national radio and television shows. In 1991, he founded Creative Nonfiction, the first and largest literary journal to publish narrative/creative nonfiction exclusively.
Kathleen George is a professor of theatre and writing at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of acclaimed novels set in Pittsburgh: Taken, Fallen, Afterimage, The Odds (nominated for an Edgar® award for best novel by the Mystery Writers of America), Hideout, Simple, and A Measure Of Blood. Kathy is the editor of the short story collection Pittsburgh Noir and scholarly books and articles.
There will be an open mic Friday evening for conference registrants to read from their work and a banquet celebrating writers Saturday night. As part of that celebration the annual WCoNA Book of the Year will be awarded along with an Outstanding Contribution Award. Attendees are also invited to sell their books through the conference bookstore.
ABOUT TOLSUN BOOKS
Tolsun Books is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization based out of Flagstaff, Arizona, publishing daring, energetic books that use separate parts to construct a whole: poetry, short stories, comics poetry, hybrids, photo stories, flash memoir, and more. Tolsun proudly practices stewardship in the literary community by publishing debut and experienced authors with diverse backgrounds, licensing artwork from working artists and designers, tabling at bookfairs, presenting at literary conferences, and hosting readings.
Registration information is available at www.wcona.com and WCoNA can be followed on Facebook.
For more information about Tolsun Books, visit https://tolsunbooks.com or contact info@tolsunbooks.com.
For more information about WCoNA, contact PJ Piccirillo pjp@brockwaytv.com.
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