President’s Column: Ineffable Twaddlings

It is the end of the month (almost) and I want to dedicate this space to a quick wrap-up of our very successful writers conference in Valley Forge as well as tell you about our upcoming Retreat.

The Catholic Writers Conference LIVE was a smashing success. We had 40 paid attendees plus an uncountable number of CMN attendees who came to our presentations, plus 17 volunteers and 20 presenters who all added up to a power-house event. Our booth was well-represented with many, many terrific books and authors signing them. Our first-ever Catholic Arts and Letters Awards (Lilies) were presented to Michelle Buckman for Rachel’s Contrition and Regina Doman for Alex O’Donnell and the 40 Cyberthieves in front of all the retailers and vendors who attended the trade show breakfast banquet. CWG is tremendously grateful to all our presenters, volunteers, attendees and, most of all, Our Lord for being a part of event. We couldn’t have done it without you. (Meanwhile – we need volunteers to help administrate the CALA for this year – please contact Karina Fabian at karina (at) fabianspace.com if you are interested.)

One very important note on the conference: We need your input!! There’s talk of changing the dates for the Catholic Writers Conference Live next year. Would you take this 3-question survey to help us decide? Follow this link and answer the three questions and it’ll help a great deal!

Our next big event is Your Word is My Delight: Catholic Writers Retreat – October 5-9, 2011 at the St. Francis Retreat Center in DeWitt, Michigan. I did send out a separate e-mailing on this event, so many of you have this information, but I want to reiterate that it looks to be a fantastic experience that is different from our writers conferences. With this retreat, we’ll work on our souls, contemplate God’s calling to us as writers and grow as writers through one-on-one critique sessions. And, because this is a writers retreat, you will be given a lot of time to just write! Please consider coming, and pass on this information to those you think might be interested. Post it on your blogs, twitter and facebook. If we don’t get more registrations for this event quickly, it may have to be canceled and we’d hate for that to happen.

Meanwhile – keep praying for our success, and God bless you all!