NaNoWriMo Writers Workshop Series

Additional time info:

The Leon County Public Library is teaming up with Tallahassee Writers Association to provide hybrid (in-person and live-streamed) workshops on writing. Every Saturday we will have a speaker from 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m., available through Zoom or Discord and in-person at the Leon County Main Library.

This will be followed by in-person open time (12:00-2:00 p.m.) to write in Program Room A at the Leon County Main Library.   More Information and Zoom Link.

Dec. 11: Join local author Marina Brown for a lively writing discussion and workshop live at the LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library in Program Room A or online on Zoom.

Marina Brown has been writing professionally for last 20 years in magazines, newspapers, poetry, and novels. She has won many awards for here works, including both the Florida Writers Association’s Royal Palm Literary Awards’ Gold Medal for Published Historical Fiction and the 2020 Published Book of the Year for her most recent work The Orphan of Pitigliano.

The speakers will be:   Free Writing Time (Nov 6, in-person only) M.R. Street (Nov. 20, through Zoom)  Susan Koehler (Nov 27, through Zoom) Author Bios: Susan Koehler is an author, consultant, and veteran educator. Over the course of 36 years, she taught all grades from kindergarten through middle school and served as a reading coach and an adjunct professor. She has traveled across the country providing professional development in the teaching of writing and is the author of four professional books and five nonfiction books for children. Susan was the 2004 Leon County Teacher of the Year and the 2005 recipient of Florida's Mary Brogan Award for Excellence in Education. Dahlia in Bloom, her first novel for young readers, was released August 2019 and was named among the "Best Books of 2019" by Kirkus Reviews. Her new novel, Nobody Kills Uncle Buster and Gets Away With It, was released on August 21, 2021. Marina Brown has written for newspapers and magazines for the last 20 years: including the St. Petersburg Times, the Tallahassee Democrat, Florida Design, and Dance Magazine. She is the recipient of numerous national writing awards: two First Place awards in the Porter Fleming Short Story Contest, Second Place in the Lorian Hemingway Contest for Short Stories, First Place in the Red Hills Poetry Contest, and she received the Florida Authors and Publishers Association Silver Medal for her poetry volume, The Leaf Does Not Believe It Will Fall. In 2020, Brown was nominated for the State of Florida Poet Laureate.Brown’s novels, Land Without Mirrors (2013) and Lisbeth (2017) both won Gold Medals in Literary Fiction from the FAPA. Her most recent work of Historical Fiction, The Orphan of Pitigliano, won both the Florida Writers Association’s Royal Palm Literary Awards’ Gold Medal for Published Historical Fiction, as well as the top award, the 2020 Published Book of the Year.Brown is a former professional ballet dancer with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a blue water sailor, a watercolorist with solo exhibitions throughout Florida, including the LeMoyne and Gadsden Museums, a cellist with the Tampa Bay Symphony, and a traveler. She lives in Tallahassee. M.R. Street is an award-winning author and independent publisher with Turtle Cove Press, based in Tallahassee and Ochlockonee Bay, Florida. She writes middle-grade and young adult fiction and has won first place in both the Royal Palm Literary Awards (for her first novel, Blue Rock Rescue) and the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Awards (for The Werewolf's Daughter). She is Secretary on the Tallahassee Writers Association Board of Directors and is chair of the Seven Hills Literary Contest Committee. Although she considers herself a Nano-Cheat-Mo because she concentrates on works in progress, she feels that anyone who benefits from the support and camaraderie of NaNoWriMo is a winner. With a master's degree in Library and Information Science, she appreciates the opportunity to partner with the Leon County Library for National Novel Writing Month.