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Writers in Paradise announces 2018 lineup

 
Russell Banks will close the conference.
Russell Banks will close the conference.
Published July 5, 2017

The 2018 Writers in Paradise conference has announced its lineup of faculty and visiting writers.

Among them are award-winning novelist Russell Banks (Continental Drift, A Permanent Member of the Family) and journalist and fiction writer Ana Menendez (Adios, Happy Homeland!). The conference will take place at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg Jan. 13-20.

Novelist Lan Samantha Chang (Inheritance), director of the Iowa Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa, will lead a special three-day workshop in short fiction. Literary agent Alexis Hurley and editor Colleen Lawrie will also conduct workshops.

The conference was founded in 2004 by former Eckerd creative writing director Sterling Watson (Suitcase City) and the college's most renowned alumnus, novelist Dennis Lehane (Mystic River, Since We Fell).

Watson is still on the Writers in Paradise faculty, and the conference is co-directed by Les Standiford (The Man Who Invented Christmas).

For participating writers, the conference offers an intensive eight-day session of workshops and classes. For the community, it presents its faculty and visiting writers at free evening readings.

Applications for the weeklong writers workshops open Aug. 1 and close Nov. 15 (writersin paradise.com/application).

Faculty members and visiting writers will present evening readings, which are free and open to the public, in Miller Auditorium on the Eckerd campus.

Menendez will be the keynote speak on Jan. 13. Banks will close the conference, speaking on Jan. 20. For a complete schedule, go to writersinparadise.com.

The other authors scheduled for evening readings are: Watson, Standiford, Chang, novelist and memoirist Andre Dubus III (Dirty Love), novelist and memoirist Ann Hood (The Book That Matters Most), poet Major Jackson (Roll Deep), novelist Laura Lippman (Wilde Lake), YA writer Laura McCaffrey (Marked), novelist Stewart O'Nan (City of Secrets), novelist Tim Dorsey (Clownfish Blues), Florida poet laureate Peter Meinke (Lucky Bones), novelist Cathie Pelletier (A Year After Henry), St. Petersburg poet laureate Helen Pruitt Wallace (Shimming the Glass House) and nonfiction writer Michael Ruhlman (Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America).

Contact Colette Bancroft at cbancroft@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8435. Follow @colettemb.