To a young writer, getting published can seem a daunting task. The "In Print" festival, sponsored by the Ball State University English Department and now in its third year, gives aspiring authors the opportunity to meet newly-published writers and learn how they managed the difficult road to their first publication.
Writers from the Ball State community packed the 150-seat Museum of Art Room 217 to standing-room-only capacity Wednesday night for a reading by recently-published authors David Griffith, Alan DeNiro and Sharmila Voorakkara. Thursday, writers again filled the room for a panel discussion on publication, which featured the authors from the previous night as well as "Indiana Review" editor Tracy Truels.
"To me, 'In Print' breaks down all the mysticism and magic of the craft," Sean Aden Lovelace, Ball State fiction writing instructor, said. "Students look at books and hang out with writers."
Senior Creative Writing major Matt Netzley said the event "gives a face" to published writers.
"I like getting to meet the person behind the book and hearing their personal experiences," he said.
Panel members said that one key to success is involvement in a community of writers who will support and critique each other's work. Though getting an M.F.A. in creative writing is not imperative to success, writers can often find that community in an M.F.A program, they said.
Jill Christman, English professor and "In Print" coordinator, said her goal was to keep the panel discussion topics pragmatic and practical to writers who have yet to publish their works.
"The idea is always to talk about publishing, but there are so many angles to that topic," she said.
The 2006 "In Print" festival discussions focused largely on book marketing, Christman said, but the authors featured Thursday night spoke mainly about the initial process of getting their poems, essays and novels to press.
"I wish I had something like this when I was an undergrad," Voorakkara said. "Young writers really need the opportunity to know that published writers are just like them except older."
The writers also fielded audience questions regarding the publishing industry, including topics such as publishing agents, copyright laws and the differences between online and print publications.
Though "In Print" is in its third year, this year's festival was the first to coincide with the publication of "The Broken Plate," Ball State's undergraduate literary journal.
Drew Davis, senior creative writing major and prose editor of "The Broken Plate," said the journal's editors were involved in "heated debates" regarding which entries from the Ball State writing community would be accepted for publication.
"We wish we could have made ['The Broken Plate'] longer this year," he said. Free copies of the journal were distributed before and after the event and are available in the English Department Office in the Robert Bell Building, Room 285.
Netzley said he didn't learn as much from this year's panel discussion as last year's, but the event still opened up conversation between writers and got them to "talk about the literary world." He also said he enjoyed the cookies available to "In Print" patrons.
The event concluded with a raffle in which three audience members won an autographed copy of a book by one of the authors featured. Books raffled included "the last copy in Indiana" of Voorakkara's 2005 poetry collection, "Fire Wheel," Christman said.
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