Editors, Agents to Speak at Annual Yosemite Writers Conference

Keynote Speaker: David Morrell

Twenty-four magazine and book publishing professionals, including New York Times best-selling author David Morrell, will speak to aspiring and published writers at the 2007 Yosemite Writers Conference, August 24-26, at the Tenaya Lodge.

Saturday’s keynote luncheon will feature David Morrell, author of First Blood (the book on which the box office hit Rambo was based), The Fifth Profession, and The Brotherhood of the Rose. Admission to the lunch event only is $55.

The conference will feature one-on-one meetings with editors and agents, along with workshops on how to write fiction, nonfiction, memoir, poetry, thrillers, spirituals, screenplays, and short stories. Also included is a free picture book critique by Melissa Manlove of Chronicle Books and one-on-one consultations for early registrants. A new highlight this year is a silent auction that will feature such items as breakfast with an agent, coffee with an editor, line-edit of a manuscript, and an astrological reading from the Cosmopolitan Bedside Astrologer.

Winners of the Yosemite Writers Contest and the Sheila L. Stephens Scholarship will also be announced. In the past, writers have traveled from as far away as Virginia, Florida, Kansas, Ohio, Georgia, Mississippi, Bermuda, Thailand, and Scotland to attend the conference.

Keynote speaker David Morrell is the award-winning author of First Blood, a novel about a Vietnam veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. A native of Ontario, Canada, he received a Ph.D. in American Literature at Penn State and taught writing at the University of Iowa before embarking on a fulltime writing career. He is the author of twenty-eight books, including The Fifth Profession, Assumed Identity, Extreme Denial, and The Brotherhood of the Rose, the basis for an NBC miniseries. The Washington Post Book World calls him an “absolute master of the thriller” and of the “hunter-hunted suspense subgenre.” Morrell currently serves as co-president of the International Thriller Writers organization. Noted for his research, he is a graduate of the National Outdoor Leadership School for wilderness survival and the G. Gordon Liddy Academy of Corporate Security and is considered by many to be the father of the modern action novel. He has been trained in firearms, hostage negotiation, assuming identities, executive protection, and anti-terrorist driving. With eighteen million copies in print, his work has been translated into over 26 languages. He lives with his wife, Donna, in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Local authors and faculty members, including acclaimed Fresno State writing professor and novelist Steve Yarbrough, comedy writer and radio personality Rik Bolman, mystery novelist Sheree Petree, thriller novelist Bonnie Hearn Hill, editor/nonfiction author Cindy Wathen, and Cosmopolitan Bedside Astrologer Hazel Dixon-Cooper, will also speak. Participating editors include Meg Bertini, Dream Time Publishing; Kate Gale, Red Hen Press; Susan Chang, Tor Books; Farrin Jacobs, HarperCollins; Brenda Knight, Weiser Books; and Steve Mettee, Quill Driver Books and Word Dancer Press. The list of literary agents and authors includes Katharine Sands, June Clark, Irene Webb, Jeffrey McGraw, Nick Belardes, Hallie Ephron, Ginny Rorby, and B. J. Taylor. Also represented will be magazine editors from VIA, Sacramento Magazine, and Visalia Lifestyle.

Additional information is available at www.yosemitewriters.com, 877-849-0176, or via email to coordinator@yosemitewriters.com.