• Sixteen presenters will be on hand for the ninth annual North Wildwood Beach Writers' Conference, June 7 & 8, 2011.

Conference fee of $80 (before April 29) includes all presentations on both days, plus a continental breakfast, sit down dinner and keynote address on June 8. (No discount will be made for those not staying for dinner.) Guests may join us for dinner for $35. Deadline to register for conference is June 2.

Writing contest:  Open to all attendees at no extra cost. Two categories: poetry and essay/article, limited to 1500 words total. Three prizes* offered in each category: $100, $50, $25. First place winners read the winning entries at the dinner. Deadline for receipt of entries is May 15. (*Based on a minimum of five entries in each category.)

[*First place essay prize is the Evelyn Schaad Award of Excellence given in honor of Evelyn Schaad who worked on this conference for eight years before losing her battle with breast cancer.]

Manuscript evaluations:  For a fee of $25, you may submit up to 25 pages of a book or up to five pages of an article or poetry to be evaluated by a professional author in a one-on-one 15-minute conversation. Materials for review must be received by May 15.

First Page Session: Attendees may send in (or attach to the registration form) the first page of a novel, short story, memoir, etc., which will be critiqued anonymously in a workshop session. No fee. Even if you do not send in a first page, you are invited to this session to listen to what an editor has to say about the importance of your first page.

Query critiques: Jane Rubino and Caitlen Rubino-Bradway will offer a query writing workshop limited to no more than 12 participants, who may sign up for the workshop when they register for the conference. There will be no additional fee for the workshop, but it will be filled on a first come/first serve basis.
  

Jane and Caitlen agree that, “We have found that many people work diligently on the manuscript only to stall out on the query, and we have found no suitable models online for what a selling query should look like – and it’s the query that is going to persuade them to read your submission.”