Writing Genre Fiction

Presenter: Holly Day

Are you a writer of historical fiction or nonfiction and you don’t know how or where to find information on the time period you’re writing about? This class will show you where to find textbooks, old newspapers, photographs, voice recordings, illustrations, photos and descriptions of historical and religious relics, and maps—ancient nautical maps to modern city maps--of all types to add authenticity and depth to period-based fiction and accuracy to historical nonfiction. Resources covered in this class will be available to find either online or in-person--this class is especially aimed at the researcher with a limited budget. The basics of compiling a bibliography will also be covered as well as how to get permissions for using photographs in published work.

Presenter: Sarah Weinman

Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita, previously edited anthologies of crime novels and stories by women published between World War II and the mid-1970s. In this session she'll discuss writers attendees may be familiar with, like Patricia Highsmith, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Margaret Millar, and those they may be less familiar with, including Nedra Tyre, Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, and Dolores Hitchens. What united these women was a relentless quest to chronicle America as it really was, not necessarily the America depicted in classic hardboiled crime fiction by the likes of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain. Their domain was more domestic, but still merciless and acute in depicting society's ills, and the terror that afflicted women and children in particular.