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Fairhope 2018:
April 6-7

Our annual conference each spring provides a chance to meet in a casual and friendly environment, with readings, panels, and book fair at Coastal Alabama Community College, Fairhope Campus in downtown Fairhope, Alabama. The Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers brings together teachers of writing as well as,  students, writers, editors, and publishers from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and others from—or interested in— the Gulf Coast region and its writing. 

The 2018 Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers Conference is co-sponsored by Coastal Alabama Community College, Fairhope Campus. 

Fairhope 2018 Keynote Speaker:
Phillippe Diederich

Phillippe Diederich is the author of the novels “Playing for the Devil’s Fire” (Cinco Puntos Press, 2016), which was named the 2017 Best Young Adult novel by the Texas Institute of Letters and 2017 Young Adult Library Services Association Best Fiction for Young Adults; and “Sofrito” (Cinco Puntos Press, 2015).

His short fiction has been published in national literary journals including Quarterly West, Acentos Review, Burrow Press, Hobart and others. In 2017 he was awarded the PEN Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship. He is the recipient of the Chris O’Malley Prize for Fiction from the Madison Review, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Florida Individual Artist Fellowship in Literature from the Florida Department of Cultural Affairs, and a John Ringling Towers Grant in Literature from the Sarasota County Artist Alliance. 

The son of Haitian exiles, Diederich was born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Mexico City and Miami. During the 1990’s he worked as a photojournalist, covering news and feature assignments in the U.S. and Latin America for national publications.