I meant to write a long, profound post about the value of writers’ conferences, but I’ve been busy with deadlines and packing and preparing to leave to go to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in Tennessee. I keep flipping through my photo album from the last time I was at Sewanee, in 2001. I received a scholarship (I think I applied about four times before I got one…I imagine the admissions committee finally said: Please give this girl a scholarship already so we can stop reading her stories every year.)
Before I arrived at Sewanee, I’d imagined it as sort of a Fresh Air Fund for sad urban writers stuck in tiny apartments. But it took only one night for me to realize that this place was pure magic. At the first dinner I sat with another writer and we immediately had a flash of friendship-love—I think that when meeting new people, you always know within seconds whether you’re going to be good friends. She became one of my best friends, someone I talk to almost every day, who I’ve traveled with and who I can’t imagine not being a part of my life.
Anyway. I digress. I have to finish packing, and I have to figure out how to cram five pairs of shoes into my suitcase.