Workshop Description 
Today’s writers have several different options for getting their material into print.  Panel participants will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working with a traditional publisher, self-publishing, hybrid publishing and kickstart publishing as well as some current publishing scams.

About Kristine Anderson

Kristine F. Anderson earned a Ph.D. in Communicative Arts from Georgia State University. She has worked as a freelance writer for national newspapers and magazines and taught high school English. She has also taught courses at Southern Polytechnic State University, now part of Kennesaw State University, and Shorter College.

Crooked Truth, published by Mercer University Press, is her debut novel.  It received the Ferrol Sams Award for Fiction and has been nominated for the Willie Morris 2021 Southern Fiction Award.

She lives with her husband and a house full of books and magazines in the Atlanta area.

Winner of 2018 Ferrol Sams Fiction Award

Nominated for 2021 Willie Morris Southern Fiction Award

Nominated for 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Debut Novel

About Ben Meeks

Ben Meeks grew up in Dahlonega, the biggest small town in the North Georgia mountains. He spent his childhood appreciating nature and as he grew older was able to have a wide variety of unusual and exciting experiences. Ben was able to travel internationally, including Europe and India. He participated in, and won, a martial arts competition, was hit by a ricocheting bullet, and was in a high speed car chase. He also received a late night phone call from the secret service, who he hung up on.

Ben also appreciates fantasy in all forms with a special fondness for shifters. Suffering from a lack of shifter fiction that appealed to him he decided to write some. Ben prides himself on using real world experiences to add realism to his fiction. He uses his love of the outdoors and growing up in North Georgia as the setting for his contemporary fantasy series, The Keeper Chronicles.

You can connect with Ben on his website at www.authorbenmeeks.com or follow him on Instagram or Facebook, user authorbenmeeks.

About Patricia Ann Bowen

Patricia’s writing career began straight out of college as the only English major in her class to graduate with a writing job: in-house copywriter creating advertising and catalog copy, speeches, training and marketing materials, and more. Over a long career in sales, market development, management, consulting, and international business, you name it, she wrote it. All non-fiction.

With degrees in English and Psychology, and certifications in personal coaching and grief counseling, she’s taken her knowledge of the mind and the world and begun applying it to writing fiction. She’s taught writing in Kennesaw State University’s OLLI program and leads a short story writing group for the Atlanta Writers Club.

Patricia is a former Jersey girl who now divides her time between the burbs in Georgia and the beach in South Carolina. She’s a travel junkie, beach bum, foodie, tree hugger, noir fan, penny pincher, and more… all stuff to write about. She has many muses that inspire, haunt, and urge her on as she writes and rewrites. Among them are Flannery O’Connor, Elena Ferrante, Pascal Garnier, Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Hitchcock, and Nora Ephron. She invites you to join them on their odyssey of words.

About Chris Swann

Christopher Swann is a novelist and high school English teacher. Chris earned his Ph.D. in creative writing from Georgia State University. He has been a Townsend Prize finalist, longlisted for the Southern Book Prize, and twice been a finalist for a Georgia Author of the Year award. His books include Shadow of the Lions, Never Turn Back, and A Fire in the Night. His fourth novel, Never Go Home, will drop in August 2022. Chris lives with his wife and two sons in Atlanta, where he is the English department chair at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School

About Jim Auchmutey

Jim Auchmutey spent almost 30 years as a writer and editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, specializing in stories about the South and its history and culture. He was twice named the Cox Newspapers chain’s Writer of the Year and was honored by the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, the Associated Press and the Sigma Delta Chi journalism society.

Jim has written extensively about food. He has co-authored two cookbooks, including the first devoted solely to barbecue sauces and rubs, The Ultimate Barbecue Sauce Cookbook. He is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi and has won awards for his food writing from the James Beard Foundation and the Association of Food Journalists. He was a guest curator for the Atlanta History Center’s Barbecue Nation exhibition, which inspired his latest book, Smokelore.

A native Georgian, Jim comes from a long line of barbecue pitmasters and Brunswick stew makers. He lives in Atlanta with his wife, Pam, an editor at Emory University. His previous book was The Class of ’65: A Student, a Divided Town, and the Long Road to Forgiveness.