Invitation and Registration Info for the 1st Annual "Page and Stage" Publishing Conference of LA

Linda Dove (Linda.Dove@woodbury.edu), Aug. 31, 2019

Dear Publishers, Editors, Curators of the Spoken Word, and Program Managers of Greater Los Angeles,

I’m writing today to introduce you to an exciting event we have planned for this fall on the campus of Woodbury University in Burbank: The First Annual Page and Stage Conference: Bringing Together the Publishing Communities of Los Angeles.

On Friday, October 25, 2019, MORIA Literary Magazine—the national literary magazine of Woodbury University—together with the Writing Department and the College of Liberal Arts are hosting a professional conference that will gather together representatives of the various literary magazines, journals, presses, publishing houses, and reading series in the greater Los Angeles area for one day of roundtables, workshops, book displays, and conversation.

Our Keynote Speaker will be noted poet and essayist, Dana Gioia, former head of the National Endowment of the Arts and, more recently, the California State Poet Laureate. This conference is not designed for writers and readers, but rather caters to those who publish and/or curate the work of writers for an audience of readers.

These are the editors, the publishers, the press owners, the program managers, the reading series curators, the spoken-word event coordinators, the screeners, and the reviewers of the words, rather than the creators or the consumers of the words. This annual meeting expects to serve as a forum for galvanizing the publishing community in our region.

The main events will consist of two concurrent roundtables in the morning, a Keynote plenary and luncheon at midday, two concurrent roundtables in the afternoon, and a workshop on poem-filmmaking in the late afternoon.

Tables for displaying books, chapbooks, broadsides, and promotional materials will be available bookfair-style in our central atrium so that participants and passers-by can browse and buy during the afternoon coffee hour.

For those who want to extend our time together, we have also organized an after-hours reading and spoken word event in the delightful, café-like Enkeboll Courtyard, to showcase some of the current voices of the page and the stage in Los Angeles and to offer a more relaxed and informal atmosphere to end our day together.

Four 90-minute roundtables are intended to be discussion-based forums where the co-moderators will offer opening remarks of about five minutes apiece, followed by a full hour of open conversation and exchange of ideas with the rest of the group.

They are meant to engage some of the most significant challenges and hot-button topics in the publishing world today and are being co-moderated by the representatives of well-known Los Angeles-area presses, journals, and reading programs (more details can be found at the link below):

• Publishing Difference: How To Steward Diverse Content(s)
• Compensating Words: How To Balance Value and Viability
• Big-tent Model or Niche Market? How To Choose a Publishing Identity
• Aural and Visual Cultures, Collaboration, and Hybridity: How To Re-imagine the Written Word

I hope by this point I’ve piqued your interest, and you’d like to join us for this unique opportunity! Here is the link here to the Conference registration page, which is posted to the MORIA Literary Magazine website: https://www.moriaonline.com/page-and-stage-conference.

Please make sure to fill out the form with your contact information and follow the directions for payment. We are asking all conference attendees to pay a nominal $25 fee to offset the food at lunch and during coffee hours, program materials, a table at the book fair if your publication would like to display/sell your goods, and parking.

We have a link on this registration page to a Woodbury University donation site, where you will need to make a non-anonymous donation to MORIA Literary Magazine that will actually serve as your conference registration fee. (This method saves us from paying service fees to a platform like Paypal or Eventbrite).

Please note that the registration fee increases to $40 after October 1st, so it helps us and helps you to register early. Program materials will be available at the registration desk on the morning of the conference, but the digital version of the conference program is also available by following the above link.

The address for Woodbury is as follows: 7500 N. Glenoaks Blvd. Burbank CA 91504-1052

Should you have questions, please feel free to contact me via the email address below. I hope to be able to welcome you to the campus on October 25th for a day of conversation, collaboration, and companionship as we explore together what it means to be a part of the Los Angeles publishing community today.

Best, Linda.

Linda L. Dove, Ph.D.

Participating Adjunct Professor in the Writing Department
Faculty Editor of MORIA Literary Magazine
Coordinator of Honors and Extended Programming,
CoLA WRITE|Create

102 Whitten Hall Woodbury University
7500 N. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank CA 91504-1052 

linda.dove@woodbury.edu

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