Writer’s Conference Nov. 4 to Include ‘Hands-On’ Workshops

Workshops ranging from publishing trends to writing horror fiction and writing for movies and TV--along with a speakers’ list that includes authors, agents, screenwriters and Charles Champlin, The Times critic-at-large--are on tap for the Chapman College Annual Writer’s Conference Nov. 4.

Registration before next Wednesday is $65 ($75 thereafter) for the daylong conference, which will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. The price includes a continental breakfast and lunch. For more information, call (714) 997-6750.

Once again the conference is being coordinated by Irvine mystery writer Robert Ray, a fiction-writing instructor at Chapman and author of the Orange County-based Murdock detective series.

Ray said this year’s conference will feature the biggest-ever lineup of speakers and include several changes suggested by last year’s participants: “To keep the customers happy,” he remarked.

“People wanted more exposure to literary and mainstream writers, and so we tried to do that,” Ray said. “The other big thing is we have five hands-on workshops. We tried to cover all the bases.”

Participants will choose from six workshops each hour throughout the day.

“Hands-on” workshops will be offered on poetry, screenwriting, novel, short fiction and magazine query letters. Twenty-eight other workshops will be conducted by professionals such as Los Angeles literary agent Ben Kamsler, Mission Viejo author Maxine O’Callaghan, screenwriter Mann Rubin (television’s “Knott’s Landing,” and “Dynasty”), Allyn Johnston (acquisitions editor for Harcourt Brace Jovanovich) and Champlin, author of “Back There Where the Past Was.”