Calling All Writers

Our friend Matt Tullis, now teaching at Ashland U, is looking for help with an upcoming panel. Here's Matt:

First off, the conference: This is the annual conference for AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs), which means a good number of the attendees are either teaching in creative writing programs (both graduate and undergraduate) or are creative writing grad students. At this conference, they have hundreds of panels focusing on the craft of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of readings and other professional development type stuff. Anyway, I've gone two years in a row, and moderated two panels, and one thing I've noticed is there are a lot of people at this conference who have worked in newspapers or are still working at newspapers, but feel journalism doesn't fit in with the creative writing crowd. Just about all of the nonfiction craft panels are about memoir, like that is the only type of creative nonfiction that people write or read, and we both know that's not true.
Here is what I would like to propose (both as a person with an MFA in creative writing and as a journalism professor): I would like a creative nonfiction craft panel that focuses on the art of journalism. I've noticed a lot of discussion on gangrey lately has really become centered on craft (this has always been the case, but it seems like it's really taking off lately). I think a lot of the nonfiction people at this conference don't realize there are journalists who take craft every bit as seriously as the personal essayist or the memoirist.
So my question to you is: Do you think three or four regular Gangreyites would be willing to come to Chicago sometime between Feb. 29 and March 3 to participate in a panel that dives into all of what I've just explained?

Here is what I would like to propose (both as a person with an MFA in creative writing and as a journalism professor): I would like a creative nonfiction craft panel that focuses on the art of journalism. I've noticed a lot of discussion on gangrey lately has really become centered on craft (this has always been the case, but it seems like it's really taking off lately). I think a lot of the nonfiction people at this conference don't realize there are journalists who take craft every bit as seriously as the personal essayist or the memoirist.

So my question to you is: Do you think three or four regular Gangreyites would be willing to come to Chicago sometime between Feb. 29 and March 3 to participate in a panel that dives into all of what I've just explained?

Interested? Holler at Matt at mtullis@ashland.edu.