Charles Connor and Harriette Austin
Former students of Harriette Austin pay tribute to their favorite educator each year. Austin has inspired her students for more than two decades to dream to become writers and to follow the dream. Austin, a longtime writing instructor for the Community Programs at The University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education, is honored annually with a writers conference which carries her name.
Organized by some of Austin's former students, the annual Harriette Austin Writers Conference is directed to new and practicing writers of fiction and nonfiction works. Workshops focus on improving writing skills and provide information on how to get published. More than 300 people attended the 1995 conference hosted by the Georgia Center last July. The third conference is planned for June 21-23, 1996, also to be held at the Georgia Center.
A Georgia Center instructor for 21 years, Austin has been credited with inspiring several of her students to seek careers in writing and publishing. In fact, a group of her students -- Charles and Beverly Connor, an administrator in UGA's College of Education and an independent instructional designer, respectively, and Alice Gay, media director for a learning disabilities training program in UGA's College of Education -- formed a small publishing company, Quick Brown Fox Publishers, Inc. The company cosponsors the conference with the Georgia Center.
"She inspired several of us to pursue careers in publishing and writing," Charles Connor said of Austin, "And for that, we can't thank her enough."
Presentations were made at last year's conference by local, state, and national publishing editors, literary agents, authors, and special experts. Areas of interest included mainstream fiction, mystery/suspense, science fiction, romance, and nonfiction.
Attendees received professional advice on getting published, manuscript critique and personal consultation, and information from experts in forensic techniques.
As a tribute to Austin's career in acting, conference goers were also treated to an interactive "murder mystery in the round" and an old-time live radio drama production. Austin was a stand-in for actress Gail Patrick, at the old Republic Studios, and studied at Yale University, New York's Barnard College, and at the Max Reinhardt Theatre in Hollywood.
Quick Brown Fox Publishers, Inc. published a calendar last year featuring a collection of short stories written by Austin's students. Connor said of the 2,000 calendars printed, 1,200 were sold and 700 were donated to the Georgia Adult Literacy program. Calendar sales helped pay for the first conference in 1994, which attracted 269 registrants.
Austin's former students cosponsored the event, not only to honor the instructor, but also to fulfill Austin's two-decade-long desire to provide aspiring writers with the resources they need to fulfill whatever dream they may have.
"We realized that there was not a comparable conference in Georgia. We saw this as a way to pull the Athens' writing community together," Connor said. Through the annual conference, local writers are able to meet people in publishing and make contacts, he said.
This year's conference will be held June 21-23, 1996, at the Georgia Center. For more information, contact Hayley Burch, Department for Program and Conference Development, Georgia Center for Continuing Education, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-3603, 706-542-1754, e-mail: burchh@gactr.uga.edu.