The image you see above is me at my first author conference. I can’t believe it was two years ago! I have attended three Write-to-Publish conferences now.
The Write-to-Publish Conference is a division of the Christian Writers Institute and is hosted annually in June at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. During the three conferences I have attended, I have had the pleasure of meeting Brett Harris, who, along with his twin brother Alex, wrote Do Hard Things, which my mother once read to my siblings and I as a school project when I was in high school (at least I think I was in high school; it was long ago, I may not remember all the details). I also met Steve Laube, a literary agent who runs the Steve Laube Agency, and whose courses I’ve taken on the CWI.
One of my favorite things about the Write-to-Publish Conference is their bookstore. I’ve bought plenty of books from the bookstore. Here’s a list of some of them:
- Wisteria by Ginny Graham
- Both books from the Heirs of Neverland duology by Kara Swanson
- Both books from The Curious Realities duology by Sara Ella
- Water’s Break by Sophia L. Hansen
- Falling Flat by Jenna Brooke Carlson
- A Silver Cord by Thomas L. Martin
Purchasing books and having them signed by the authors was such a blessing. In the left picture below, I’m posing with Sophia L. Hansen. And as you can see in the second picture, I myself have had the privilege of selling copies of my own poetry book, Step Into Creativity, at the conference bookstore!
I must say, Wheaton College is a special place to hold a conference for Christian authors. The campus houses the Marion E. Wade Center, an awesome literary museum where you can view the books, works, papers, and even personal belongings of great British authors whose works have influenced Christianity and the literary world itself. During my second Write-to-Publish Conference, I joined a tour of the Marion E. Wade Center. This literary museum focuses on the lives and works of seven British authors: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Charles Williams.
This right here is the very wardrobe owned by C.S. Lewis himself!
Talk about inspiration! I peeked inside. Plenty of fur coats, but no Narnia, sadly. But you can look at these pictures of the very writing desks used by Lewis and Tolkien themselves!
How could I forget this moment of my first time at Write-to-Publish? It was so neat to see all these things by big-name fantasy authors admired by pretty much everyone. Hey, maybe someday, my own writing desk will be a famous collector’s item sitting in a literary museum!
So why is a raven like a writing desk?
These were only a few of the highlights of the conferences. I enjoyed many classes, fellowship with other writers, meetings with editors and agents, and an invitation from Steve Laube to send Enclave Publishing a book proposal for my King Arthurian fantasy trilogy (WOO! Fingers crossed!).
Well, anyway, like I said earlier, sadly, the wardrobe did not lead to Narnia. And the tornado warning that we experienced just this past June didn’t give us a tornado to take us to Oz, either.
Tornado warning? Wait, what?
Yeah, during my third WTP conference, the Thursday night event was briefly interrupted by a tornado warning. Wheaton wasn’t hit by a tornado. I believe a nearby town had a tornado, but nothing came to Wheaton, just a fifteen to twenty-minute-long warning. But my point is, the wardrobe didn’t take me to Narnia and no tornado formed to take me to Oz! Ugh. Boring!
Here are a couple pictures of the sky during and after the tornado warning:
Well, so that was the rabbit trail this blog post went down (and I highly doubt that rabbit trail leads to a certain rabbit hole that would take me to a certain Wonderland).
To finish off, Write-to-Publish has become a special author conference for me. June 2024 was the time that I attended my first-ever author conference. I specifically chose it because of its connections to the CWI, and I intend to build firm roots in this author community.
