The Cape Cod Writers Center Conference
is celebrating its first half century next month with a series of
classes and talks from August 5-10 at the Resort & Conference Center
of Hyannis, Mass. Begun in 1963 by a dozen writers known as the Twelve
O’clock Scholars, the first conferences consisted of talks for aspiring
writers by authors visiting the Cape—Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Art
Buchwald, and Jacques Barzun.
Fifty years later the focus continues to be on authors helping
authors ready their work for publication, although that now includes new
media and technology. “At a time when the publishing industry is in
transition, it is gratifying to see that the literary impulse remains
strong and continues to draw aspiring authors, poets, and screenwriters
to our conference,” says conference director Nancy Rubin Stuart,
executive director of the Cape Cod Writers Center.
In keeping with
the Center’s tradition, this year’s lineup includes keynotes by
bestselling writers Joseph Finder and Andre Dubus III and Beacon Press
executive director Amy Caldwell, as well as presentations by novelist
Matthew Pearl and Boston Poet Laureate Sam Cornish, among others. For
Finder, supporting the conference is a good thing. He hadn’t heard of
writers’ conferences when he was trying to get his first book, The Moscow Club, published
in the late ‘80s, but he wishes he had. “When I first tried to figure
out how to write a novel,” he says, “I had no idea how to get it going.
It was before the Internet. I didn’t know any writers. I felt like I was
in the old Soviet Union. I had no idea how to write a query letter, or
if you called. I went to Widener [Harvard University’s library] to look
up literary agents. I was doing this in the dark. The purpose this
conference serves is highly important. I’ve learned so much from other
writers. I still do.”
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