| January 17 |
Room F-119. Mike Pinto, Author of "In A League of Your Own, Positioning Yourself as the
Only One to Call" (to be released in Feb '08), Field Manager for the So. Illinois Miners Minor League Baseball Team, and
President of BrandChampions International. This energetic presentation will be great. Hope to see you there! |
| February 21 |
Cancelled because of JALC closure |
| March 20 |
Critique Night. Bring a small sampling of your work to share with members. Receiving and giving feedback
among fellow writers is very beneficial in your growth as a writer. It is always a fun and helpful meeting. Hope to see you there! |
| April 17 |
Professor Allison Joseph is editor and also poetry editor of the Crab Orchard Review. She also directs
the Young Writers Workshop at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she holds the Judge William Holmes Cook
Endowed Professorship. A winner of the John C. Zacharis First Book Prize and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf and
Sewanee Writers Conferences and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry, Joseph is the author of What Keeps Us
Here, Soul Train, In Every Seam, Imitation of Life, and Worldly Pleasures. |
| May 15 |
Angie Wyatt, News Anchor for WSIL, Channel 3. Wyatt, an Alabama native, came to So
Illinois and WSIL in Dec 1997. She has worked in Panama City, FL, Boston, MA, and Buffalo, NY. Wyatt has also worked
as a freelance reporter for Court TV, C-SPAN, & CNN. She has reported from South America and Alaska. No doubt she
has many interesting things to share with us. Hope to see you there. |
| June 19 |
Laura Benedict is the author of mystery novel Isabella Moon published this year by Ballentine
Books. This first thriller is set in small town Kentucky with "evil goings-on behind the white picket fences of
Anytown, U.S.A." A young mother of two, Benedict, who received a two-book deal, has another novel scheduled with Ballentine. |
| July 17 |
Critique Night. Bring a small sampling of your work to share with members. Receiving and giving feedback
among fellow writers is very beneficial in your growth as a writer. It is always a fun and helpful meeting. Hope to see you there! |
| August 21 |
Jacinda Townsend, a graduate of Harvard and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, now teaches English at
Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Published in numerous literary magazines, she recently sold two stories to
Chicken Soup for the Soul series. Her work has been anthologized in O.Henry Fiction Stories 2000 and
Telling Stories: Fiction by Kentucky Feminists. A former Fulbright fellow, Townsend was a 2002 Huston Wright Award finalist. |
| September 18 |
Dr. David E. Christensen spent a career at Southern Illinois University Carbondale teaching
about the need for a sustainable balance between the needs of the planet and the needs of humans. Adding to his
academic writing, Christensen published Healing the World: A Primer About the World and How We Must Fix in for
Our Children in 2005 and Earth is Overpopulated Now in 2007. In 2008, he published Shuttle Song: And Other Poems.
An avid letter-to-the-editor writer, Christensen recently won a Golden Pen Award from Southern Illinoisan readers. |
| October 16 |
Guest Speaker: Evan Youngblood, owner of Megabytes in Herrin, which offers computer
solutions from web sites to printers. Evan is involved with almost every aspect of technology today, from
building computers to networking to web site design and development, web site hosting, graphics design,
and programming. |
| November 20 |
Critique Night and Election of 2009 Officers. |
| December |
No meeting in December. SIWG wishes you and yours the very happiest holiday season. |