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The Fifth Annual Carolinas Writers Conference is coming to Wadesboro on April 20. The conference is being hosted by the Union County Writers’ Club, the Anson County Writers’ Club and South Piedmont Community College and will be held at the SPCC Lockhart-Taylor center campus and in the Ansonia Theatre in Wadesboro.

“This conference will give you the opportunity to hear established authors talk about their work and meet with them in an informal setting,” according to Randy Rayfield, president of the Union County Writers Club.

This year’s conference, which will be from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., will have presentations for general audiences by four best-selling authors, afternoon workshops for beginning and advanced writers, and Back Porch Stories.

The author in attendance will be Robert Dunn, Marjorie Hudson, Robert Macomber, and Angela Knight and Lt. Michael Woodcock.

There will be four presentations in the morning from Dunn, Knight, Hudson and Macomber.

Dunn, a biologist at North Carolina State University and author of “Every Living Thing” and “The Wild Life of Our Bodies” will present Writing the Wild Life, a story of how a tropical biologist ended up studying and writing about life. He said his writing “focuses on the stories of the scientists behind the science, who they are, what they do and how and why they did it.”

Knight, a New York Times bestselling author of the Mageverse paranormal serious, will present Fight! Writing a Great Fight Scene which will discuss the techniques used to create great action sequences. She will discuss how to create heroes and villains who are a god match and how to choreograph fight scenes.

Hudson, a creative writer who is the author of “Accidental Birds of the Carolinas” and “Searching for Virginia Dare” will present How Do Life Experiences Become Fiction Stories and will discuss how she turned her discoveries of Southern life into an award-winning short story collection.

Macomber, an internationally recognized lecturer and author of “Honorable Lies”, will present Go Out There and Get Your Story which will discuss how a writer can tell a story more vividly by becoming fully immersed in the story.

There will be four afternoon workshops from Knight and Woodcock, Dunn, Hudson and Macomber.

Knight and Woodcock, who have been married for 26 years, will present Real Life Hostage Negotiation. This two-part Powerpoint workshop will begin with Woodcock, a 24 year veteran sheriff for Spartanburg County and a negotiator for 14 years, who will discuss the techniques used by hostage negotiators. The workshop will end with Knight discussing the techniques used to write realistic hostage negotiation scenes.

Dunn will present Writing the Wild Life, which is the story of his switch from forestry to anatomy and the challenges and advantages of being a scientist who writes instead of a full time science writer.

Hudson will present Writing From Scratch which will discuss goals and methods of writing.

Macomber will present Setting the Historical Scene which will discuss the line between boring or intriguing the reader.

The Back Porch Stories will feature writer Michael Harrell with other stories from Martha Johnson and Tyris Jones. The moderator will be Randy Rayfield.

For more information, visit www.carolinaswritersconference.org.

— Staff Writer Laura Edington can be reached at 910-997-3111, ext. 18, or by email at ledington@civitasmedia.com.