WVBF: Writing Workshop - Carter Taylor Seaton

Carter Taylor Seaton
Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone

While the conventional wisdom for budding writers is "write what you know," I propose that stepping outside that comfort zone makes us better writers. Imagine if Shakespeare only wrote characters like himself. Using his imagination is what makes his work timeless. In this workshop we will discuss the pros and cons of writing outside our own selves.

Carter Taylor Seaton is the author of three novels: Father’s Troubles; amo, amas, amat…an unconventional love story; and The Other Morgans, as well as numerous magazine articles, and several essays and short stories. Her non-fiction works include Hippie Homesteaders, The Rebel in the Red Jeep, Me and Mary Ann, and We Were Legends In Our Own Minds.

She holds a Tamarack Foundation Fellowship Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts and the West Virginia Library Association honored her with the 2014 WVLA Literary Merit Award. In 2015, Marshall University’s College of Liberal Arts honored her with an Alumni Award of Distinction. In 2016 she received the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

​She graduated from Marshall University in 1982 with a Regent’s degree in English and Business, and worked as a  marketing professional in West Virginia and Georgia for over thirty years. Now, also a practicing ceramic sculptor, she lives in Huntington, West Virginia with her husband Richard Cobb.

Learn more and view the full 2023 West Virginia Book Festival Schedule at wvbookfestival.org.