The Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration will celebrate its 10th anniversary this year by bringing back poet and nonfiction writer Richard Shelton, who was the keynote at the first conference in 1998. In this year’s keynote address, Shelton will discuss his book Crossing the Prison Yard: Thirty Years as a Prison Volunteer, which chronicles his experiences with the men and women he considered “monsters” before becoming their teacher. He’ll also present the workshop “The Real Story: Writing Creative Nonfiction.”

The annual event is set for March 28-29 in Sierra Vista. In addition to putting local writers in touch with professionals in a variety of writing genres, it also gives unpublished authors a chance to win prizes for their own work.

Conference attendees can participate in a writing contest associated with the celebration. Submissions will be accepted in the areas of poetry, short story, and non-fiction. The deadline to submit entries to the contest, which is open to anyone who registers for the writing celebration, is Friday, Feb. 22. Cash prizes will be awarded on the final day of the event, and winning works will appear in the 2009 edition of “The Mirage,” Cochise College’s art and literary magazine.

Shelton, retired Regents’ Professor of English at the University of Arizona, is the author of 12 books of poetry and three books of nonfiction, including Going Back to Bisbee. His works have been published in more than 200 journals, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and The Antioch Review. In 1974, Shelton began offering creative writing workshops at the Arizona State Prison and has continued to do so since that time. The prose and poetry of several of his students, among them Paul Ashley, Greg Forker, Ken Lamberton, and Jimmy Santiago Baca, have been widely published, and Baca was a keynote speaker at the writing celebration several years ago. Shelton is currently directing writers’ workshops at the Arizona State Prison Complex near Tucson.

The writing celebration features four additional writing professionals.

√  Lisa Bowden, co-founder of Kore Press, a Tucson publishing house, presents “Publishing - From Concept to Book.”

√  Allen Woodman, author of short stories and six books of fiction, including Saved by Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald, a collection of humorous stories, and The Cows Are Going to Paris, a children’s picture book, presents “The Joy of Writing the World’s Shortest Story.”

√ Rebecca Seiferle, a reviewer for The Harvard Review and Calyx and founding editor of online international poetry journal The Drunken Boat, presents “The Poem’s Intention.” Seiferle’s first book, The Ripped-Out Seam, won the Bogin Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Writers’ Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, and the National Writers’ Union Prize, and was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. She also has written Wild Tongue; Bitters, winner of the Western States Book Award and a Pushcart prize; and The Music We Dance To, winner of the 1998 Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America.

√ Carey Alstadt, a Cochise College counselor, former intern for the television sitcoms Everybody Loves Raymond and Becker, and winner of the television category in the Palm Springs 2001 Writing Contest, presents “Writing for TV Sitcom and Drama.”

The creative writing celebration is co-sponsored by Cochise College, the University South Foundation, and Sierra Vista Parks & Leisure Services. Conference brochures are now available. To learn more about the event and the writing contest, visit the Cochise College website at www.cochise.edu, email creativewriting@cochise.edu, or call Leslie Clark at (520) 417-4112.