For 15 years, Al Zagofsky served as a correspondent for the Times News, a regional newspaper in Pennsylvania, where he contributed over 2,000 stories. He also contributed to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the West Sacramento News-Ledger, Pennsylvania Magazine and Honda Tuning Magazine. He has published The Lehigh River and Canal at Jim Thorpe, PA, The Lehigh Gorge Trail Guide, and Return From Oblivion. For the past 12 years, he has been the publisher of an online e-magazine, JT Today/Carbon County Magazine/California Update. He will be talking about his experiences in journalism and publications, how to write stories for publication, and how to get published.

A respected, longtime figure in the local writing and journalism community, Rich Ehisen is the managing editor of the State Net Capitol Journal, a LexisNexis publication that covers state-level public policy issues and trends nationwide. He is also a regular contributor to Comstock’s, where his monthly column Discourse features a direct Q&A conversation with some of the Capital Region’s legislative leaders and decision makers.  His work has also appeared in a number of other regional and national publications, including Government Technology, Sunset, San Francisco, Sacramento and Capitol Weekly.

Barbara Link

Winner of the Bazzanella Prize for Fiction

“Love your characters!” says Barbara Link, award-winning California author and poet, Barbara Link. She would know, having produced numerous successful works, including three stories aired on KVPR, a National Public Radio Affiliate. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in literary magazines and small presses. She received the CSUS Bazzanella Prize for fiction. Her memoir, BLUE SHY was published in 2010 and awarded First Prize in the Sacramento Friends of the Library First Chapter contest. She co-authored Coffee and Ink, a handbook for writing groups and was a past editor of Sacramento’s Poetry Now. Publication credits include American River Review, Poetry Now, Earth’s Daughters, Mindprint Review, Anima, Whitefish Review, Missouri Review, Women’s Compendium, Hardpan, Dead Snakes, and Earth’s Daughters.

Scott Evans

University Writing Teacher, Conference Director

Author of Short Stories and Mysteries

Good, crisp, clean dialogue allows a story or novel to flow smoothly and keep readers engaged. This workshop provides advice on ways to make your dialogue relevant to your plot and interesting to readers, while also fleshing out characterization. Tips on techniques to hide the mechanics of clear attributions and the conventions of dialogue will also be discussed, as well as some practice editing and revising dialogue.