WESTFIELD – The first Western New York Writers Conference was held at Lake Shore Center for the Arts. One attendee commented “Wonderful experience. I learned something from everyone, had great conversations, and am leaving inspired.”

This daylong event was attended by approximately 40 local authors and participants and was made possible by a grant from Northern Chautauqua Community Fund.

Four presenters offered a range of writing topics.

Mark Pogodzinski, founder and Owner of NFB Publishing, the largest book publisher between Chicago and New York City, did the opening keynote address and throughout the day conducted one-on-one interviews with conference participants. As one conference attendee said, “Mark was very generous in spending much of his day willing to talk about multiple issues with writers.”

Author Michael Parzymeisco, whose novel “The Dale” was published by NFB Publishing, gave two presentations. The first was “the Adventure of Publishing: Why you should love every minute of the process!” And the second one was “Publication Day and Everything After: What to expect when your novel hits the market.” “This was terrific and contained information most writers don’t think about,” another participant said.

Parzymeisco’s book was the subject of newspaper articles and featured on Steve Harper’s PBN podcast.

The third presenter was Brian Tomaszewski, Ph.D., author of non-fiction, Geographic Information Systems. He explained how the idea was formed, how he connected with a publisher, tools and workflows for writing and graphics, and what it takes to bring a major nonfiction project to completion. As one listener exclaimed, “Awesome!”

Cristie Herbst, Editor for 30 years, discussed the Art and Science of Editing. “Amazing, such a voice of experience,” another attendee said.

Lunch was catered by Courtney Thompson from Parkview Café. The day was jam-packed and included time for individuals to do a five-minute pitch of their own books, as well as display them for sale throughout the day. Everyone received a SWAG bag full of writing goodies.

As they left, an attendee remarked, “This was my first conference, and I enjoyed it and learned a lot. Would definitely come again.”

Organizer and Writing Program Director for Lakes Shore Center for the Arts, Mary Ellen Humphrey says, “Western New York needs its own annual writers conference. Writers need other writers. Our mission is to create a supportive and nurturing writing community. Let’s hope this is the first writers conference of many to come!”