Some of you may know me as an intern and assistant to Laurie McLean, co-director of the San Francisco Writer’s Conference, the SFWC Foundation, and a founding Partner of Fuse Literary Agency. Some of you may know me as a published author. Some of you may know me as the freelance editor of Simon Alkenmayer’s “The Creature’s Cookbook” series.

But I now have a new thing to tackle, and that is that I’ve been asked to help fact-find and organize a new and exciting wing of our organization. The SFWC is in the early stages of planning several inexpensive. single-day, in-person or online conferences tailored to a few specific areas of publishing. In light of the current political climate, we are focusing mostly on diversity in the industry, and our first idea is an LGBTQ+ focused conference.

What I want to know is this: what sorts of things do you want to learn? If you are a writer (of any genre) who is queer/non-cis or write characters who are, what is it that is most important to you? Are you interested in craft-based classes that help you shore up plots or characters, give ideas about technique or process? Are you interested in understanding how the industry is changing and how well it has embraced diversity? Are you interested in meeting certain industry professionals like agents, editors, authors, etc? Do you want to learn how to write a query letter that highlights your unique voice and subject matter? What specific things would help you best?

Do you have any ideas about the organization of a writing conference, in other words, what style is most helpful to you? SFWC often has a great mix of lecture/Q&A sessions, meet and greets, speed-dating, pitchcraft, keynote speakers, and one-on-one meetings. How would you like your conference to look?

This is the early stages of planning, and right now I am just researching. Our goal is to provide enough information to get the voices heard, so we definitely want to craft a conference that fits you best!

If you’d be willing to pass this to all the writers you know who might be interested, I would be very grateful for the input!

Thanks very much.