Upcoming Club Meetings

  • January Meeting

    • January 21, 2025
    • 7:00 PM
    • Providence United Methodist Church, Youth Room, 2nd Floor, 2810 Providence Rd, Charlotte
    Register

    Amy Landers

    Three Keys to Building an Effective Author Website: Craft a Digital Space Where You Can Know Your Audience


    In this presentation, Amy will share a simple approach to creating a website that attracts visitors and turns them into loyal fans. You'll discover how you can leverage storytelling and a "hub and spoke" model to foster a community around your work. This session is a must for authors looking to connect with their audience in meaningful ways. If there is sufficient interest, this short session will be followed by a more in-depth Saturday workshop.

    Amy Landers is a website designer, teacher, and writer. She came to marketing via a biology degree and a passion for sharing the stories of the natural world at the ABQ BioPark. For more than 15 years, she's been serving creators, purpose-driven entrepreneurs, and other changemakers through marketing, copywriting, and design services. When she's not at the computer, she loves to practice and teach about gardening. She and her family grow food and wildlife habitat on a small farm near Asheville, NC.

    If you have questions or thoughts,

    please contact membershipcwc@yahoo.com

    We look forward to seeing you!

    Show details

  • February Meeting

    • February 18, 2025
    • 7:00 PM
    • Providence United Methodist Church, Youth Room, 2nd Floor, 2810 Providence Rd, Charlotte

    Jenifer Ruff

    The Basics of Self-Publishing


     Jenifer Ruff has published more than     fifteen  mystery, thriller, and crime fiction   novels. She is a hybrid author—one with self-   published and traditionally published books     and she has mastered the art of self-   publishing.  She’ll give you the knowledge to   know if self-publishing will work for you. Bring  your questions!

    USA Today bestselling author Jenifer Ruff writes dark and twisty mystery thrillers—fifteen books in all—including the award-winning Agent Victoria Heslin Series. Her writing has garnered numerous honors and awards: Pretty Little Girls won the 2020 Reader's International Favorite Thriller Award; Vanished on Vacation, the 2022 Global Book Award Winner (Thriller Category); and When They Find Us was an Amazon #1 Bestseller and #1 New Release.

    Jenifer grew up in Massachusetts, has a biology degree from Mount Holyoke College and a Master’s in Public Health and Epidemiology from Yale University. She adores peace and quiet, animals, and exercise, especially hiking. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina and the mountains of VA with her family and a pack of greyhounds. If she’s not writing, she’s probably devouring books or out exploring trails with her dogs.

    To learn more visit jenruff.com

    If you have questions or thoughts,

    please contact membershipcwc@yahoo.com

    We look forward to seeing you!

    Show details

  • March Meeting

    • March 18, 2025
    • 7:00 PM
    • Providence United Methodist Church, Youth Room, 2nd Floor, 2810 Providence Rd, Charlotte

    Joy Calloway

    Crafting Beliveable

    Historical Characters




    One of the major challenges in writing historical fiction is creating characters that are both compelling to us today and true to the time period they're from. This craft talk will focus on research tactics and strategies that will help novelists build fully-formed historical characters--both fictional and biographical. It is often said that historical fiction done right will allow the reader to step back in time and feel what it would have been like to live in a time and space gone by. We'll explore how our characters can take us out of place if they're built incorrectly and also how they can truly immerse us in another era if done right.

    Joy Callaway is the international bestselling author of All The Pretty Places, The Grand Design, Secret Sisters, and The Fifth Avenue Artists Society. Joy lives in Charlotte, NC with her husband and two children. To learn more, please visit: https://www.joycallaway.com/


    If you have questions or thoughts,
    please contact membershipcwc@yahoo.com

    We look forward to seeing you!

    Show details

  • April Meeting

    • April 15, 2025
    • 7:00 PM
    • Providence United Methodist Church, Youth Room, 2nd Floor, 2810 Providence Rd, Charlotte


    Jay Ward

    How to Write Poems that Beckon-Grab-Intoxicate the Reader


    One of the most important (poetic) questions I’ve ever considered came to me back in 2016 when a workshop facilitator asked “why should the reader care about your poem?” The surface level answers were usually something like, "because I put my heart and soul into it," or "because the events in this poem really happened." The facilitator was asking something deeper, though. The reader has no connection to you and is not physically present with you; the reader has their own anxieties and happenings about which to be somber, furious, or otherwise preoccupied. What does it take to compel the reader to invest intellectually and emotionally in your poem? We’ll walk through some tips, strategies, and examples that have helped me in my quest to answer this question. A closely related question might be, how do you make the reader feel your presence on the page? We’ll discuss this too!

    Junious 'Jay' Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023). Jay currently serves as Charlotte's inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry Journal and elsewhere.

    If you have questions or thoughts,
    please contact membershipcwc@yahoo.com

    We look forward to seeing you!

    Show details

  • May Meeting

    • May 21, 2025
    • 7:00 PM
    • Providence United Methodist Church, Youth Room, 2nd Floor, 2810 Providence Rd, Charlotte


    Alyssa Pressler





    Alyssa Pressler started That's Novel Books as a used bookstore in February 2020. That's Novel started with used books in all genres before expanding into new books in January 2024. Since opening, That's Novel has always had a Charlotte author section and frequently hosts local authors for signings and other bookish events. The store also hosts writing events where local writers can gather together for focused writing time, meet others and get feedback. Supporting the local writing community is particularly important to That's Novel Books' mission and has created an engaged community around the bookstore.


    If you have questions or thoughts,
    please contact membershipcwc@yahoo.com

    We look forward to seeing you!

    Show details