Facilitator: Melanie Hutsell
Membership Status: Currently closed
Mission Statement:
Do you have a New Years’ Resolution that you are finally going to tackle that short story or novel you’ve always yearned to write?  Or maybe you’ve written poetry for years but have a curiosity about trying your hand at prose.  This group is intended for writers like you.  The hope is that we will meet once a month for constructive feedback and mutual support.  We will read excerpts of one another’s work in advance of our monthly meeting and then gather to discuss the work in person. The intent is to begin by meeting at the North Peters Panera on a mutually convenient and recurring weeknight (to be determined by the group).

This will be a closed group of up to four new writers, and it will be moderated by Melanie K. Hutsell, author of the Appalachian magic realism novel, The Dead Shall Rise, and of short fiction appearing in Appalachian Heritage, The Madison Review, Still, and other literary journals and anthologies. Visit her website.  Ms. Hutsell was recently chosen by a distinguished panel of literary professionals to be one of eight Featured Authors for Knoxville’s first National Authors Day celebration.

If interested, please send a writing sample of 1-2 pages and a brief bio, including your writing goals, to mkhutsell@outlook.com by January 26.  You must be a member of the Knoxville Writers Guild to be an applicant.  Creative nonfiction prose will be considered if submitted, but the group focus is intended to be on fiction.

Ms. Hutsell hopes to hold an inaugural “getting to know you” meeting of this new-to-fiction writing group in mid-February or early March and will contact all applicants by then.