With our co-sponsor, the Martin County Library System, and with the assistance of the good folks at the beautiful Marriott Hutchinson Island Beach Resort, we have been able to set the dates for the 2008 FIU Writers Conference in Stuart, Florida, October 22-25, 2008. 
 
Joining us in Stuart on Florida's lovely Treasure Coast in 2008 will be the same staff of fine writers and teachers and editors and agents as those who were set for the 2007 conference in Key West:  Keynote Speaker, DENNIS LEHANE (Mystic River); Fiction Writer TOM FRANKLIN (Poachers); Poet PETER MEINKE (The Contracted World); Non-Fiction Writer MARCIE HERSHMAN (Speak to Me); Freelancer and Novelist BREWSTER ROBERTSON (A Posturing of Fools); Poet and Carnegie Mellon Press Editor GERALD COSTANZO (Nobody Lives on Miami Beach); the BARNES & NOBLE PUBLISHING SEMINARS, featuring RICHARD PINE of Inkwell Management and RACHEL KLAYMAN of Crown Publishers; novelist JAMES W. HALL (Hell's Bay); non-fiction writer DAN WAKEFIELD (The Hijacking of Jesus); poet, CAMPBELL MCGRATH (Seven Notebooks); fiction writer JOHN DUFRESNE (Requiem, Mass.); poet DENISE DUHAMEL (Two and Two); fiction writer LYNNE BARRETT (The Secret Names of Women); poet NICK CARBO (Andalusian Dawn); and non-fiction writer
  LES STANDIFORD (Washington Burning).

Of course we hope that you will want to join us in Stuart, with its fabulous beaches just across the Intracoastal Waterway, where the lovely auditorium at the Martin County Library will host the evening readings, and downtown (old town) offers an exciting array of shops and restaurants.  Our program offers intensive, friendly, hands-on workshops and discussions intended to help writers at all stages of development:  you can enroll in up to three different four-day class sessions, and enjoy agent/editor roundtables, freelancing seminars, nightly readings and more.  Tuition is only $375 if you enroll by May 1.  And if you would like to reserve an individual manuscript conference with a faculty member, you can do so for an additional $50.  Do act quickly, however, as enrollment is limited and manuscript conferences sell out quickly, as will special-rate rooms (just $149 per night--use conference code FLIFLIA) at the world-class Marriott Resort.