Mesa Verde Writers
Mesa Verde
Writers Conference
Conference Dates:
Wednesday, Sept. 2 (full day)
Thursday Sept. 3 (full day)
Friday Sept. 4 (half day)
Location:
Deer Hill Expeditions, 7850 Road 41, Mancos (two miles south of downtown Mancos)
Conference Registration Fee: $500
Accommodations: Deer Hill Expeditions offers a variety of housing accommodations at a reasonable price. Please visit this link to review the choices including The Loft, a cabin, or camping. Note, please do NOT contact Deer Hill with questions about accommodations, email mesaverdewriters@gmail.com.
Of course, downtown Mancos also offers the Mesa Verde Motel and the Mancos Inn, which you may book on your own. Cortez is 18 miles to the west and Durango is 28 miles to the east and there are many short-term rental properties in Mancos as well.
Meals: The registration fee includes breakfast on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday along with lunch and dinner on Wednesday and Thursday. Dietary needs will be gathered at registration.
Scholarships: If you are interested in applying for a scholarship (we expect to be able to offer at least two), email mesaverdewriters@gmail.com for details. Applications received by May 15 will have the best chance for consideration.
Registration
Note! Registration is not complete until the conference fee has been received.
Follow this link to pay via PayPal, Venmo, or credit card.
If you are planning to stay at Deer Hill, please use one of the following options to pay:
The Loft
Cabin or Camping
Meet The Faculty
Annette McGivney
Annette McGivney is an award-winning writer who has been drawn to remote, wild places her entire life. Annette won the National Outdoor Book Award in October 2018 for her book Pure Land: A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures, and the Search for Heaven on Earth.
Annette is the author of five nonfiction books and writes frequently for The Guardian, Outside, Arizona Highways and Backpacker. She is also a professor emeritus in Journalism at Northern Arizona University where she taught for two decades.
Building Wood Fires, about humans and fire, was published in November 2017 by W.W. Norton. Annette is also author of Resurrection: Glen Canyon and a New Vision for the American West (Braided River/The Mountaineers, 2009) and Leave No Trace (The Mountaineers Books, 1997). Her next book, Plastic Shaman, is about an investigation into a deadly self-help retreat and cultural appropriation of Native American spiritual practices. Plastic Shaman will be released by Torrey House Press on Sept. 15, 2026.
Tom Andes
Shamus Award-winning writer and musician Tom Andes is the author of the detective novel Wait There Till You Hear from Me (Crescent City Books 2025) and Guess This is Kaput: Stories (forthcoming, Cowboy Jamboree Press).
His stories have appeared in Best American Mystery and Suspense Stories 2025 and The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year 2025. He lives in Albuquerque, where he is a working musician. His latest musical release is Wonderful Days (Southern Crescent Recording Co. 2026). He can be found at tomandes.com.
Lisa C. Taylor
Lisa C. Taylor is the author of the 2025 novel, The Shape of What Remains, three poetry collections and two short story collections, most recently Impossibly Small
Spaces (2018). Her second novel is forthcoming in 2027. Lisa’s honors include the Hugo House New Works Fiction Award, Pushcart nominations in fiction and poetry and Best-of-the-Net nominations in both categories.
Her poetry collaboration with Irish writer Geraldine Mills, The Other Side of Longing received the
Elizabeth Shanley Gerson Honor at University of Connecticut. Lisa holds an MFA in Creative Writing.
Monica Barron
Monica Barron is a founding member of Lesbians WriteOn, literary and lesbian culture programming on Zoom. Her book of poems, Prairie Architecture, was published by Golden Antelope Press after poems had appeared in Poecology, Naugatuck River Review, The Chariton Review, the anthology Times of Sorrow, and many other publications. More recent work has appeared in Screendoor Review, Sinister Wisdom, and The Words Faire. Barron frequently leads and produces literary and cultural programming for Lesbians WriteOn.
Her prose work included years of editorial work for Feminist Teacher magazine. Her prose has appeared in Academe, Exposures: Essays by Missouri Women, and Wordpeace.
2026 Workshops & Schedule
Tuesday, Sept. 1
5 to 6 p.m.
Fenceline Cider
141 S. Main St., Mancos
Faculty Readings plus the launch of Molly Sturdevant's debut novel, The Sleepers. (Molly is a previous conference attendee.)
Wednesday, Sept. 2
Deer Hill
7850 Road 41, Mancos
Doors open at 7:30 a.m.
8 a.m. Breakfast & Welcome
8:30 to 10 a.m.
She Did What? Surprise in Fiction (Lisa C. Taylor)
Tension is everything to a story. When characters go through predictable paces, readers lose interest quickly. My goal is to take you on an immersive journey into the element of surprise in your writing— so that it not only works, but it also transforms your story or creative nonfiction, keeping your reader with you for the entire bumpy ride. You will leave with new ideas for writing or revising existing stories.
10:00 - 10:30 a.m. - Break
10:30 - Noon
Brick by Brick: How to Build an Engaging Narrative (Annette McGivney)
Taking on a large writing project without first figuring out your narrative structure can be like embarking on a road trip without a destination in mind. In this workshop we will get down to the nuts and bolts of building a narrative structure that creates a solid scaffolding for any fiction or nonfiction genre. We will discuss the difference between a story topic and the narrative engine that drives a story. We will also explore character development, pacing, scene setting and adhering to a simple outline. The workshop will include hands-on exercises analyzing structure and applying these principles to your own work.
Noon to 1 p.m. - Lunch
1 to 2:30 p.m.
Nothing Happens No Place (Tom Andes)
Whether we’re talking about the gentrifying outer avenues in the Sunset District of San
Francisco or a small New England town of twenty thousand, the places we set our
stories tell us everything about who our characters are, what they want, and what their
conflicts are. In this generative workshop, we will examine setting as a craft element in
excerpts from published stories and novels in order to better strategize how we can
develop setting in our own work, bringing the places we write about, and the people
who live there, to life.
2:30 to 3 p.m. - Break
3 to 4:30 p.m.
Scaffolding A Poem (Monica Barron)
Scaffolding is a practice (and you can do this in any genre—I’m using poetry) in which genre knowledge is applied to words, sounds, phrases, lines, breath, and emotions and/or ideas to discover a shape for the writing (the poem in my case). If you like what you discover, you keep it. If you don’t, you discard your attempt and ask yourself what else you know about the genre that could help the piece develop.
4:30 to 6 p.m. - Student Readings (sign up at the conference).
6 to 7 p.m. - Dinner
7 p.m. - Wine & Chat
+++++
Thursday, Sept. 3
Deer Hill
7850 Road 41, Mancos
Doors open at 7:30 a.m.
8 a.m. Breakfast & Welcome
8:30 to 10 a.m.
Nothing Hits Like a Short Story (Tom Andes)
I’m sure we all know the feeling: we get to the end of a story, and we feel blown away. Often that feeling is akin to shock, sometimes to being thrown off a cliff, or like a cold wind blowing across the top of our head. The effect of a great story is often physical, and it’s particular to the short story form. In this generative workshop, we’re going to talk about the craft elements from tone to voice to plotting that go into creating this unified effect, doing generative exercises as we try to think about how we can achieve this in our own stories.
10:00 - 10:30 a.m. - Break
10:30 - Noon
Note-booking For Peace (Monica Barron)
This session is a turning of our attention toward peace in our lives. The key tool in our work is the notebook—this is a massive umbrella term for how and where you collect and remember the stuff of your life. Makers (or artists if you prefer that term) often draw on materials stored in the notebook. We will also do a mapping exercise, envisioning where the peace is in our lives. And then, time permitting, we will start imagining a piece, a work, that represents or explores peace in your life or in the life of an imagined other.
Noon to 1 p.m. - Lunch
1 to 2:30 p.m.
Freeze the Moment: Using a Freeze Frame Technique in Poetry and Prose (Lisa C. Taylor)
We will discuss and practice the technique of freezing a frame in your poem and story to slow down movement. It can become a pivotal moment that sends your reader somewhere unexpected. As you become a dispassionate observer, your writing will unfold in a cinematic way. You can write about a landscape, people, or just eavesdrop on a sleepy town.
2:30 to 3 p.m. - Break
3 to 4:30 p.m.
Wild Words: Writing About our Relationship with Mother Earth (Annette McGivney)
Whether it is describing a beautiful sunset or our life-long attachment to a certain forest, finding the right words to capture the awesomeness of the natural world is challenging. In this workshop, we will explore various ways to write about a landscape, outdoor experiences and spiritual or emotional connections to wild places. How do you make the reader feel like they are watching the sunset with you? Can you get the reader to love a patch of land as much as you do? We will spend time outside, experimenting with various techniques and attempting to paint a picture with words.
4:30 to 6 p.m. - Student Readings (sign up at the conference).
6 to 7 p.m. - Dinner
7 p.m. - Wine & Chat
+++++
Friday, Sept. 4
Deer Hill
7850 Road 41, Mancos
Note: all guests staying at The Loft must be checked out by 11 a.m.
Doors open at 8:00 a.m.
8:30 a.m. - Breakfast
9:-00 to 11 a.m. - Everything You Need to Know About Writing and Publishing
All questions fielded about the writing and publishing business.
Full panel: Annette McGivney, Tom Andes, Monica Barron, Lisa C. Taylor, Mark Stevens