An ode to writer’s events

Or how I learned to stop grumbling and love the conference (and workshops, open mics, and lectures)

By Lauren Cusimano

I hate writers’ conferences.

Or, at least I did until very recently. For years, something about them made me grumpy (please note, I am often grumpy by default). It was maybe the overall message that, as writers, we need to get off our phones and disconnect from the world to avoid distraction, something I consider unrealistic. I still feel guilty about the time an instructor caught me rolling my eyes during one of these lectures on social media dependency. For years, I could not find my groove. The memoirists seemed self-centered, the poets pretentious, and the fiction writers awkward and unfriendly (myself included).

Plus, writers’ conferences, retreats, and workshops are expensive. They require vacation time or childcare, pet sitters, and precious Alaska Airlines miles. And there are usually early mornings for Alaska folks since most on the East Coast forget we’re a full four hours behind them.

But truly, if you find the right community, the right workshop, or the right retreat or conference to look forward to year after year, they become a haven. A chance—hypocrit alert—to disconnect from day jobs and other duties to focus on you and your craft.

This year alone, I enjoyed attending the 2025 Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference in Homer and the Southampton Writers Conference in New York. I was also accepted to be part of the BookEnds’ 2025-2026 Fellowship Nine with Stony Brook University and the Virtual Summer Retreat Short Fiction Cohort with Abode Press out of Austin, Texas. These have been invaluable experiences. (And don’t even get me started on the friendships.)

Because now that I’ve gotten over myself, I can say all workshops, open mics, conferences, even holiday parties with writer groups, have been crucial. I’ve found help on detangling the query letter, gotten professional eyes on my first pages, and learned that my finished manuscript wasn’t so finished after all. Now I’m a regular writer’s events addict, and you can be, too.

To start, get genre-specific. I still think about the “Worldbuilding in Horror” program through 49 Writers in May 2024 with Leslie J. Anderson, the weeks-long “Writing Horror with Dana Schwartz” progtam I did through Not Sorry in fall 2023, and “Gays & Ghouls: A Queer Horror Workshop” with Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya that had me writing well beyond the Zoom call.

Or you can explore outside your bubble. The “Poetry & Survival: How the Sonnet Can Save Your Life” with poet and literature scholar Angela Alaimo O’Donnell—the March program from Alaska Writers Guild—helped me realize poetry can be a salve for grief. Or you can get professional help in the industry. I can’t tell you how much I learned from the “Publishing Crash Course with Mackenzi Lee” workshop I did, again through Not Sorry.

But there is something about Alaska writers and poets writing or being in the audience with other Alaska writers. You’re already past all the questions you get in the Lower 48 (when does the sun set, have you ever caught a salmon, do you know Sarah Palin?) and can get right to work. For example …

49 Writers has the Shrine of St. Therese Writing Retreat starting September 4th. Registration also just opened for the 2025 Alaska Writers & Illustrators Conference in Anchorage on September 26 and 27. It’s never too early to start looking into Homer accommodations for the 2026 Kachemak Bay Writers Conference in May. There’s all this and countless more programs, retreats, workshops, and writers’ series happening throughout the state, more than I can name here (or that you’d care to read).

We’re also working on a robust program schedule of in-person and virtual lectures and workshops for the fall and spring. If you’re at all inspired by this, keep an eye on our events calendar. We have a lot of good things coming.

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Lauren is a 49 Writers board member. She works in conservation communications and writes horror and speculative fiction stories. When not writing or at writing events, she loves riding her bike.