In our past two posts, we’ve told you about our new team and developing protocols and a manual for the team. Now that fall has begun, Write to Publish planning is in full swing, and we have some announcements we can share with you!
Date: Write to Publish 2018 will occur on Saturday, April 21, 2018 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Unlike in recent years, the conference is taking place in the spring instead of winter. Why? We wanted to celebrate this conference’s roots—this is Write to Publish’s tenth anniversary, and the conference was originally held in the spring. It was moved to the winter in 2013 due to concerns about potential scheduling conflicts. However, with the move to winter came weather-related fears, and Write to Publish 2017 was nearly in danger of cancellation because of the heavy snowfall. By moving the conference to April, we’ve eliminated those concerns.
Venue: This year, Write to Publish will take place in Hoffmann Hall, a gorgeous structure built in 1995 and named after George C. Hoffmann, the history professor responsible for renaming Portland State University in 1951. We’ll use Hoffmann for our panel discussions, vendor fair, and keynote speech, and we’ll utilize nearby classrooms for small group discussions and interactive learning sessions.
Keynote Speaker: We are so excited to announce Claire McKinney, the founder and owner of Claire McKinney PR in New York City, as our 2018 Keynote Speaker! Claire is a book publicist with over twenty years of experience and has worked in publicity and marketing departments in multiple renowned publishing companies. Claire recently released a book on promotion for authors, Do You Know What a Book Publicist Does? A Guide for Creating Your Own Campaigns, which will be for sale at Write to Publish this year. She will speak at the 2018 Writer to Publish conference about book promotion, branding, and the importance of thinking about branding even without a finished book.
Presenting Sponsors: We are extremely pleased and grateful to Willamette Writers and Pomegranate Communications for being our presenting sponsors for Write to Publish 2018. Willamette Writers supports aspiring and professional writers throughout the Pacific Northwest, and Pomegranate publishes award-winning fine art books and gift products. Their support helps make this conference happen!
There’s still a lot of work we need to do to prep for Write to Publish, but the conference planning is well under way. We can’t wait to take you with us on a journey through publishing this spring!