The 35th Flathead River Writers Conference
Writing as Witness: Stories Only You Can Tell
Red Lion Hotel, Kalispell, Montana
October 4 and 5, 2025
Registration Opens Soon
With a Special 4.5-hour workshop Friday, October 3, 2025 – $140
Full Sat./Sunday Conference – $225
Single Day – $125
(Financial assistance maybe be available for those in need – send request to aotfboard@gmail.com)
To pay by check, mail to Authors of the Flathead, PO Box 7711, Kalispell, MT. 59904
Agent Pitch Sessions (12 minutes) – $35
Student – $75 (some scholarships available on request)
Red Lion Conference Hotel Rate – $109 (406-751-5050)
4.5-hour workshop Friday, October 3, 2025
Author Debbie Burke
The Villain’s Journey
Take a road trip with thriller author Debbie Burke to discover unique villains on a fun, educational journey. With nearly 40 years of experience as a writer, editor, and teacher, Debbie guides you along twisting trails that lead to mesmerizing villains who keep readers up nights. She deconstructs classic and contemporary crime stories to reveal the darkest depths of the human heart.
This workshop features writing prompts and customizable Build-a-Villain worksheets to bring characters to chilling life. Her actionable techniques are easy to understand for writers at all levels of experience. Participants will have an opportunity to share their projects.
Travel on The Villain’s Journey to create your most memorable character yet.
Debbie’s book, The Villain’s Journey – How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate, is included for each registrant.
Bio: Debbie Burke has survived nearly 40 years of writing fiction and nonfiction. Her Tawny Lindholm Thriller series received accolades from BookLife/Publishers Weekly (2023 Best Mystery/Thriller), Eric Hoffer Montague Award finalist, BestThrillers.com finalist. She writes for The Kill Zone blog (listed in Writer’s Digest Best Websites); Montana Senior News; magazines including Killer Nashville, The Big Thrill, 406 Woman. She reviews books for International Thriller Writers and has been a magazine columnist. She also operates a freelance editing business. To counteract kinks from too many hours sitting at the computer, Debbie enjoys Zumba and hiking. During long walks, she plots murders…but only fictional ones.
10am – 4:30pm with lunch break
Full Conference – October 4/5
Saturday 8am – 5pm
Sunday 8:30am – 5pm
Author and Keynote Speaker Shelley Read
Writing as Witness: Stories Only You Can Tell
How deeply authentic can writers be in the stories they want to tell, and why does this matter? In this lecture, author Shelley Read will share the single observation that unexpectedly sparked her bestselling debut novel and will explore how your own best writing can emerge from your most genuine moments of awe and witness.
Shelly will present two additional workshops. Titles will be posted soon.
Bio: Shelley Read’s debut novel, Go as a River, is an international bestseller that has been translated into thirty-four languages and is in development for film with the Mazur Kaplan Company. Winner of the High Plains Book Award for Fiction and the Reading the West Book Award for Debut Fiction, Go as a River is also a Sunday Times bestseller, a Goodreads Choice Award finalist, an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Debut Fiction, an Indie Next Pick, and a Colorado Public Radio Books We Love selection, among other national and international accolades.
Shelley was an award-winning senior lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades, where she taught writing, literature, environmental studies, and honors. She is a mom, mountaineer, world traveler, and fifth-generation Coloradan who lives with her family in the Elk Mountains of Colorado’s Western Slope.
Agent Abby Saul
Please Read My Manuscript: Quick Tips for Queries
Query letters are the most common first step to opening the publishing door, so you need to write a great one. Find out what you need to include and how to make your query stand out. If you’re feeling brave, bring your query for the group to look at together.
Ask an Agent: Everything You Can and Should Ask Your Publishing Partner.
Why do you need an agent, and what do agents even do? Come explore answers to these and other pressing agent questions, and explore what to ask on The Call, what working with an agent looks like, and how an agent can take your writing and career to the next level. Bring your agent questions!
Bio: Abby Saul has over 15 years of publishing experience and is an editorial expert with a passion for fantastic reads. She founded The Lark Group after working on both the publishing and agenting side of the business, and represents bestselling, award-winning, and engrossing adult commercial and literary fiction. Her wish list includes mysteries, thrillers, women’s fiction, book club fiction, historical fiction, literary fiction, and select narrative nonfiction.
Agent Cindy Spiegel
Behind the Scenes of the Publishing Process
Cindy Spiegel, who is currently the CEO of the independent publisher Spiegel & Grau (and was previously Publisher of Spiegel & Grau at PRH and Publisher of Riverhead Books), takes writers behind the scenes of the publishing process, discussing such questions as what really goes on in acquisition meetings, why blurbs matter, how publishers prioritize books within a season, etc.
How to Be an Effective Advocate for Your Book
You understand your book better than anyone else—or do you? Publisher Cindy Spiegel discusses how to best work with your editor and publicist to inspire them rather than get in your own way.
Bio: Cindy Spiegel is the co-CEO of Spiegel & Grau, an independent multi-platform publisher founded in 2021; previously she was co-publisher of Spiegel & Grau at PRH and co-publisher and founding editor of Riverhead Books. As an editor and publisher, she has worked on many award-winning and bestselling books, including Go as a River; The Kite Runner; The Color of Water; Just Mercy; Born a Crime; Orange Is the New Black; Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human; and many, many others.
Agents Cindy Spiegel and Abby Saul
Open Q&A about the current state of the publishing business.
Author Jake Arrowtop
https://bottlecap.press/ (search Arrowtop for his book)
Writing Culturally-Responsive Fiction
Am I pandering or am I authentic? This is a question I ask myself when I write about my tribe. And the answer is almost never satisfactory. We write about our lives. Oftentimes, it’s the first topic we attempt to write about. However, the sheer breadth of experience and diversity can prove to be a daunting task when writers attempt to write from a distinct perspective. Join Jake as he offers tips on writing culturally relevant characters in fiction as well as his process for writing about his culturally distinct home on the Blackfeet reservation. The session will focus on Indigenous characters in fiction but many of the tips of care can be applied to other marginalized voices.
Poetry as Catharsis
Who here thinks the world is wild right now? I do! But wouldn’t you know it, writing poetry is an excellent tool for reflecting and processing challenging experiences. Join Jake, a seasoned educator, as he presents strategies for poetry writing aimed at new poets. This interactive poetry exercise is meant to help you develop your unique poetic voice as you begin your lyrical adventure.
Bio: Jake Arrowtop is an Amksapi-Pikuni educator and writer. His fiction has appeared in Hemingway Shorts, The Chapter House Journal, Scribble Lit, and his poetry collection Rez Void can be found at BottlecapPress.com. Jake is currently writing his first full-length novel.
Author Debbie Burke
Do You Really Need to Edit Yourself?
With AI editing and grammar programs available today, why bother to comb through your manuscript to find repeated words, punctuation errors, misspellings, and awkward phrasing?
Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and other programs catch many first draft problems. But only the human brain infuses your story with a conscience, emotional intelligence, subtlety, and nuance.
Learn how to maximize your unique human wisdom in the soulless age of AI.
This presentation includes handouts with self-editing tips.
See Debbie’s Bio under the Friday Workshop at the top of this page.
Authors Debbie Burke, Jess Owen, and J.D. Evans
Self-Publishing or Traditional Publishing? What’s Best for You?
Self-publishing once carried a stigma as the last resort for writers who couldn’t snag a traditional publisher. No longer. Many well-known authors have forsaken the traditional route and choose to do it themselves. Faster production time, higher royalties, and control over when/how the book is released are a few reasons why.
Author J.D. Evans
Writing Relationships Your Readers Will Care About
In this workshop J.D. Evans will share methods for portraying powerful character chemistry whether in friendships, romance, or antagonistic relationships. Strong chemistry builds tension and adds depth and stakes to your story, and keeps readers turning pages.
Bio: J. D. Evans writes epic fantasy romance. After earning her degree in linguistics, J. D. served a decade as an army officer. Now she writes stories, tends to two unreasonable tiny humans, knits, sews badly, gardens, and cultivates Pinterest Fails. After a stint in Beirut, J. D. fell in love with the Levant, which inspired the setting for her debut series, Mages of the Wheel. Originally hailing from Montana, J. D. now resides in North Carolina with her husband, two attempts at mini-clones gone rogue, and too many stories in her head.
Author Jonathon Fetter-Vorm
Mind the Gutter
Taking inspiration from “The Gutter” — that’s comics-industry lingo for the blank gaps between panels — we’ll consider writers and ways of writing (both in prose and in graphic narratives) that build coherence out of odd fragments, jarring juxtapositions, empty spaces, and audacious leaps. And then, time permitting, we’ll attempt a few leaps of our own.
How to Make Comics (the Hard Way)
A peek inside the process of developing, scripting, and drawing a graphic novel, with (hopefully) a few industry insights along the way.
Bio: Jonathan Fetter-Vorm is an author and artist. His first book, Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb was selected by the American Library Association as a Best Graphic Novel for Teens in 2013 and has been translated into a dozen languages. His other books include Battle Lines: A Graphic History of the Civil War, co-authored with historian Ari Kelman, and the Eisner Award nominated Moonbound: Apollo 11 and the Dream of Spaceflight. He is currently working on a graphic memoir to be published by Pantheon in 2026. Jonathan’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, and Guernica. He lives with his wife and son in Somers, Montana.
Author Jess Owen
The Marathon: 10 Keys to Sustaining Your Lifelong Writing Journey
The old saying goes, “writing is a marathon, not a sprint,” but what does that actually mean for the average writer with big dreams? In this workshop, Jess will share insights and exercises to maintain your writer-stamina that draw from her lifetime of writing practice, and fourteen years in publishing. From new writers just stepping on the path to mid-career pros feeling burnt out or unsure of ‘where to go from here,’ this workshop offers something for everyone ready to go the distance.
Bio: Jess Owen has been writing quite literally since she could hold a pencil, and has built a ‘hybrid’ career, both self-publishing and traditionally publishing in different genres. Her fiction has been praised as immersive, emotional, and transformative. She always hopes to inspire and empower other writers to take command of their craft and career, because she believes everyone in the room has an important story to tell.
Author Robert Petrone
cehd.missouri.edu/person/robert-petrone/
Developing the “Internal Narrative” in Memoir Writing
Although it may seem counterintuitive, what matters most in memoir is not “what happened” in someone’s life (the external narrative) but rather the “meaning making” the narrator does in relation to what happened. This meaning making is often referred to as the “internal narrative” and tends to be more challenging for memoirists to develop, particularly in early drafts. In this workshop, we’ll explore this idea of the “internal narrative” within memoir writing. Specifically, we will examine examples of published memoirs, engage in writing activities to develop and integrate the internal narrative into our writing, and grapple with the core question memoirs must center: What meaning have you made of what happened in your life?
Bio: Robert Petrone, Ph.D., is a creative nonfiction writer and an Associate Professor of English Education at the University of Missouri where he teaches classes on creative nonfiction and writing pedagogy. His research and writing focus on rurality, disability, adolescence/ts, and education. He has authored over 40 publications, including 3 books—one of which highlights the experiences of high school English teachers in rural Montana. He is currently revising a coming-of-age memoir, Used Cars, which focuses on his experiences growing up in a large Italian Catholic, New York family amidst parental disability, secrecy, and shame.