PNWA 2021 Conference Recap

Ah, the Pacific Northwest, home of orcas, exceptional music, mushrooms, and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA). Even in the shadow of the ‘Zon, coffee shops and independent bookstores thrive in the Seattle area. Our soggy season of mist and rain, our independent spirit and creative energy, and our horrendously long commutes mean a lot of us are readers, which also means many of us are writers.

Now before you think the whole PNW is like the setting of Twilight, be aware that my bias is for the maritime side of our region. There’s a vast section of the PNW that’s home to rattlesnakes and potato farmers, but barring the four desiccated years I spent on the “east side” during college, I’ll let the sagebrush cowboys sing praises of their eternal sunshine-bleached plains.

Now, let’s return to the land of damp and moss and the topic at hand—a recap of the 66TH annual PNWA conference.

The PNWA Annual Conference

The PNWA conference is held every September and brings together writers (published and aspiring) with industry professionals. My critique partners and I signed up in early spring, excited to attend our first writing conference together. Sadly, in March, the organizers took the conference virtual. In hindsight, they made a good call but—after a year and a half of virtual events—it was a bummer.

Still, after attending the smaller PNWA winter writing intensive in January, I was sure I’d get value out of the conference, virtual or not. The conference spanned five days and included informational sessions and workshops, two special events, an awards ceremony for two writing contests, and the opportunity to pitch your project to a literary agent.

Special Events

The conference special events included a tea party with author Julia Quinn of Bridgerton fame. There was also a movie screening with author Damon Suede. I didn’t attend either (partly because I missed the deadline cutoff—oops), but I heard from others that they were fun.

Contest Winners Announced

On Saturday night, they announced the winners of the writing contests. There were twelve categories in the non-published writing contest, and three in the published writing contest.

Although I didn’t win, being a finalist in the non-published Middle Grade category was thrilling!

Agent Pitching

The price of conference admission also included one pitch to a literary agent. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up pitching because the book I plan to query is middle grade (written during NaNoWriMo last year), and the PNWA fully-booked the three agents interested in middle grade before I got slotted in. However, one of my critique partners pitched successfully and got a full request from the agent she spoke with.

Conference Content

There were multiple tracks in the conference including sessions on writing craft, business, industry expectations, tools, and marketing. It was terrific to have options… but the multiple tracks also meant we couldn’t attend every session we were interested in. Luckily, the three of us often attended different sessions, and could share notes and handouts. I tried to balance sessions about craft, business, and marketing. I attended:

• How to Get Over Your Fear of Rejection and Pitch Your Story 🥇
• Pitch Fest & Practice Your Pitch
• Plot a Story This Weekend
• Effects of COVID 19 on Writers 🥇
• Scene and Sequel—The Rhythm of Fiction 🥇
• Tips for Writing a Series 🥇
• Self-Editing for Fiction 🥇
• Navigating Kindle Direct Publishing
• Marketing Your Novel—How to Target Your Prime Audience 🥇
• How to Treat Your Writing Career Like a Small Business 🥇
• How to Make the Most of Your Instagram 🥇
• Let’s Talk Dialogue Basics
• Pride, Prejudice, and Mr. Darcy
• The Bullet Proof Query: Creating a Query Letter Agents Will Love 🥇

Several were excellent, and I took pages and pages of notes. Others were less successful, but I still found them useful. A few were only useful because of the shared chat conversation the attendees held during the presentation.

The keynote speech was the very last event which I initially found strange. In my experience, the keynote starts a conference and sets the tone. However, closing the conference with the keynote worked because it left us inspired.

Author Damon Suede gave the high-energy and entertaining speech, balancing humor with real talk about how we’ll never reach our goals if we don’t take chances. I enjoyed it and left the conference fired up to keep moving forward!

PNWA Conference Wrap Up

There still wasn’t enough diversity in the attendees, although this time, there was more diversity among the presenters. I cannot believe there are not more people of color writing in the PNW, so either the PNWA hasn’t put enough effort into outreach, or they aren’t attracting the presenters who would draw a more diverse crowd.

I found this conference valuable and plan to attend (in person) next year. The virtual format worked; the PNWA pulled together a conference website which was a vast improvement to the multiple emails we received for the winter intensive. They provided a clear agenda with the associated zoom links, and all sessions had moderators so the presenter could concentrate on the content. The annoying people from the winter intensive were back and (surprise!) hadn’t changed their stripes, but with multiple tracks to follow, they weren’t present in every session. I was bummed too that they didn’t have more agents available to choose from, and hope that will improve as we move back into a physical conference next year.

What writing conferences have you attended this year?

Header Photo by Compare Fibre on Unsplash