Amesville Writers' Workshop
Writing with a Sense of Place
June 6, 7, and 8, 2024
Writing with a Sense of Place
June 6, 7, and 8, 2024
The second Amesville Writers' Workshop is officially open for registrations! Join our outstanding faculty (see below) for three days of inspiration and instruction in the beautiful Appalachian Foothills village of Amesville. There will be workshops, craft talks, readings, story-telling, live music, and great food! Registration is $350 and includes all meals, activities, receptions and more. Spaces are limited and are on a first come/first served basis. Information on how to register can be found below the faculty profiles. (Note: Great local housing is available, a list of options will be sent to registrants.)
We look forward to seeing you in Amesville, home of the famed Coonskin Library, established in 1803, one of the first libraries in the Northwest Territories.

Ann Pancake is a native of West Virginia. She’s published two short story collections, Given Ground (UPNE 2001) and Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley (Counterpoint 2015), and a novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been (Counterpoint 2007), which was one of Kirkus Review’s Top Ten Fiction Books of the year, won the best Appalachian Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the Orion Book Award and the Washington State Book Award. She has also received a Whiting Award, an NEA grant, a Pushcart Prize, the Bakeless Prize, and the Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and the Community Fellowship. Her stories, essays, scholarly articles, and journalism have appeared in venues like Orion, The Georgia Review, Manoa, Poets and Writers, The Journal of Appalachian Studies, and New Stories from the South, the Year’s Best. She lives in Preston County, West Virginia.
Bonnie Proudfoot received a BA in Art Ed and English Ed from Fairmont State, an MA in English from WVU, and a second MA in Creative Writing from Hollins University. She arrived in Athens to work on a PhD in Creative Writing, but before completing that degree, began teaching at Hocking College, where she remained for over 20 years. Bonnie received a Fellowship in the Arts from the WV Department of Culture and History, and has published fiction, poetry, reviews, and essays. Her first novel, Goshen Road, (Swallow Press, 2020) was selected by the Women’s National Book Association for Great Group Reads, was Long-listed for the PEN/ Hemingway Award, and received the WCONA Book of the Year Award. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her debut book of poems, Household Gods, was published by Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2022. She lives in Athens, Ohio, and has taught writing workshops throughout the region.
Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio and an Academy of American Poets Fellow. Her poetry collections include Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), finalist for the NIEA award; A Place So Deep Inside America It Can’t Be Seen (Sheila Na Gig Editions, 2020), winner of the 2020 Ohio Poet of the Year Award and Dirt Songs (forthcoming EastOver Press 2024). A ninth generation Appalachian, she is the editor of I Thought I Heard A Cardinal Sing: Ohio’s Appalachian Voices, funded by the Academy of American Poets and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Women of Appalachia Project’s anthology series, Women Speak. Gunter-Seymour is a retired instructor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University; an artist in residence for the Writing the Land Project and a Pillars of Prosperity Fellow for the Foundation for Appalachian Ohio. Her work has been featured on Verse Daily, Cultural Daily, World Literature Today, The New York Times and Poem-a-Day.
Meagan Lucas is the author of the award-winning novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs (Main Street Rag Press, 2019) and the collection Here in the Dark (Shotgun Honey, 2023). Meagan has published over 40 short stories and essays. She is Pushcart, Best of the Net, Derringer, and Canadian Crime Writer’s Award of Excellence nominated and won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction. Her novel Songbirds and Stray Dogs was chosen to represent North Carolina in the Library of Congress 2022 Route 1 Reads program, and won Best Debut at the 2020 Indie Book Awards. Meagan teaches Creative Writing at Robert Morris University and in the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville. She is the Editor in Chief of Reckon Review. Born and raised on a small island in Northern Ontario, she now lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Michael Thomas Ford is the author of numerous books, for both young readers and adults. He’s published in a wide range of genres, including nonfiction, humor, essays, mysteries, literary fiction, and commercial fiction. His work includes one of the earliest educational books for young people about the HIV/AIDS crisis, a comedic trilogy featuring Jane Austen living as a modern-day vampire, a series based on the cult favorite television show Eerie, Indiana, and short stories for numerous anthologies. His most recent book is the YA novel Every Star That Falls, which is a sequel to the bestselling Suicide Notes. A five-time recipient of the Lambda Literary Award for excellence in LGBTQ literature, he has also received the Jim Duggins Mid-Career Novelist Prize and been a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Ignyte Award, and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award.
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REGISTRATION: Please fill out and submit this form then send a check or money order for $350 made out to Village Productions, PO Box 32, Amesville, Ohio 45711. We will hold your reservation for ten days, pending receipt of your payment. Your will receive confirmation notices of both your initial registration and receipt of your payment and a follow up email providing information about the program and housing. (Refund policy: We understand things can change. If you request a refund prior to Feb. 1, 2024, we refund you fees, less a $20.00 handling charge. After that date and up to June 1, 2023 we will only be able to refund $200 of your fees unless someone from the waiting list takes your spot.
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