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The Winona Christian Writers Conference

Join us for The Winona Christian Writers Conference

July 17-19, 2025

Register Here

This inaugural 3-day gathering in beautiful Winona Lake, Indiana, features workshops in four genres (Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Writing for Young Readers), readings, lectures, cultural events, a banquet, and keynote speaker Jessica Hooten Wilson.

Our conference welcomes emerging writers of all walks: from college students and graduate students to teachers and other adults seeking to improve and publish their writing. Drawn together by our unique perspective as believers, WCWC focuses on excellence, beauty, and craft.

Grace College in Indiana, offers college bass fishing and with the lake close, you can kayak or paddleboard and take beautiful sunset photos.
Department of Humanities at Grace College
Interested in a Degree in English? Meet our English degrees and creative writing professor at Grace College a Christian College. Learn more.
Location

Held on Grace College campus beside picturesque Winona Lake, WCWC draws on the area’s rich Christian heritage as a revival site for evangelists such as Billy Sunday and Billy Graham, as well as its legacy of celebrated authors including James Whitcomb Riley, Theodore Dreiser, and Ambrose Bierce. Today, Winona Lake boasts plenty of inspiration including over 10 miles of off-road trails, fishing, kayaking, a swimming beach, a farmer’s market, artisan shops and boutiques, fine dining, and more.

Cost & Scholarships

Thanks to a generous gift, we are offering a reduced registration of just $350 for this first year of the conference (registration includes most meals). We also offer a limited number of $100 discounts for K-12 educators. Finally, we have a few need-based full scholarships available. To inquire about an educator discount or a need-based full scholarship, email wcwc@grace.edu.

Why Choose Winona Christian Writers Conference?

WCWC is committed to providing a world-class conference experience at an affordable price. When registering for the conference, you will select one of our four workshop tracks: Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, and Writing for Young Readers. (Seats for each track are strictly limited, ensuring a more personal experience.) During the conference, you will also receive a 15-minute manuscript consultation with one of our faculty or guest writers. Most meals (including our keynote banquet featuring Jessica Hooten Wilson) are included in the registration fee, as are activities such as a nature walk and tour of the Billy Sunday Home.

Travel & Accommodations

Grace College is located in Winona Lake, IN, just south of Warsaw, IN, and about 2h 30min southeast of Chicago, IL, 1h west of Fort Wayne, IN, and 2h 30 min from Indianapolis. You’ll find a campus map and directions here. The Winona Lake/Warsaw, IN area offers a wide variety of accommodations from major chain hotels to Airbnb’s; here are some recommendations. WCWC also offers attendees an economical option to stay in on-campus accommodations; more information is available through the registration site.

Schedule

Conference dates: July 17-19, 2025. Check back soon for a more detailed schedule.

Contact Us

Questions? Email us at wcwc@grace.edu

About the Organizers

Lauren G. Rich English and Journalism Program Director

Lauren Rich, Ph.D.

Dr. Rich is Chair of the Department of Humanities and Professor of English at Grace College. She is also the Director of the English & Journalism Program and the Director of the Office of Faith, Learning, & Scholarship. She currently serves as executive treasurer for the Indiana Council of Teachers of English. Rich specializes in early 20th century British & Irish literature and food studies. Her most recent publication is “’A Little Startling’: Subversive Consumption in the Late Novels of Molly Keane” in The Edinburgh Companion to Irish Modernism.

Email: richlg@grace.edu

John Poch, Ph.D., M.F.A

Dr. Poch is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Grace College. He is the author of eight collections of poems, including the forthcoming Dark Cathedral (Slant Books, 2025). His poems have been published in Paris Review, Poetry, Five Points, The TLS, and many other magazines. His first book of criticism, God’s Poems: The Beauty of Poetry and the Christian Imagination, was published by St. Augustine’s Press in 2022. He was a Fulbright Core Scholar at the University of Barcelona in 2014. He is currently the series editor for the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize.

Email: pochje@grace.edu

Meet our 2025 Faculty and Guest Writers

Jessica Hooten Wilson, Ph.D.

Keynote

Jessica is the Fletcher Jones Chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University. She is the author of several books, most recently Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do the Heathen Rage?: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress. Her book Giving the Devil his Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov received a 2018 Christianity Today book of the year in arts and culture award and The Scandal of Holiness received a 2022 Award of Merit. Other awards include a Fulbright Fellowship to Prague, an NEH to study Dante in Florence, a Biola University sabbatical fellowship funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and the 2017 Emerging Public Intellectual Award. 

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George David Clark, Ph.D., M.F.A

Poetry Faculty

David is the author of Reveille (winner of the Miller Williams Prize), and Newly Not Eternal. He is co-editor of Playing with Fire: Christian Poets Reflect on Faith and Practice (forthcoming from Baylor). David’s recent poems can be found in Agni, The Believer, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Editor of 32 Poems, he teaches creative writing as an associate professor at Washington & Jefferson College.

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Katy Carl, M.F.A.

Fiction Faculty

Katy Carl is imprint editor at Word on Fire Luminor, writer in residence at the University of St. Thomas–Houston, and author of As Earth Without Water and Fragile Objects. A senior affiliate fellow of Penn’s Program for Research on Religion and Urban Civil Society, she has published essays in many outlets including Ekstasis, Evangelization & Culture, Fare Forward, Public Discourse, Genealogies of Modernity, Mere Orthodoxy, Church Life Journal, and Front Porch Republic, among others.

Shemaiah Gonzalez, M.A.P.S., M.F.A.

Nonfiction/Memoir Faculty

Shemaiah Gonzalez’s work has appeared in America Magazine, Image Journal’s Good Letters, Ekstasis, The Curator, and Loyola Press, among others. Her book Undaunted Joy: The Revolutionary Act of Cultivating Delight will be published with Zondervan April 2025.  A Los Angeles native, she now lives in Seattle with her husband, whom she has known since she was 14 years old, and their two teen sons.

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Gary Schmidt, Ph.D.

Writing for Young Readers Faculty

Gary Schmidt is the bestselling author of numerous children’s and young adult novels including Okay for Now (National Book Award finalist and Children’s Choice Award), Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (Newbery Honor and Printz Honor Book), and The Wednesday Wars (Newbery Honor Book). Gary previously taught literature and creative writing at Calvin University; he currently serves on the faculty for Scriptoria Workshop. 

James Matthew Wilson, Ph.D., M.F.A

Guest Writer – Poetry

James Matthew Wilson is the Cullen Foundation Chair in English Literature and the founding director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Saint Thomas. The author of fourteen books, his most recent collection of poems is Saint Thomas and the Forbidden Birds. The Strangeness of the Good won the poetry book of the year award from the Catholic Media Awards. The Dallas Institute of Humanities awarded him the Hiett Prize in 2017; Memoria College gave him the Parnassus Prize, in 2022; and the Conference on Christianity and Literature twice gave him the Lionel Basney Award.

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David Marsh, M.F.A.

Guest Writer – Fiction

David Marsh is the author of the award winning novels The Confessions of Adam and Waterborne: Chronicle of the Clan of Noah. He has taught at Grace College and  facilitates the Westside Writers’ Workshop in Avon, IN.

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Katherine Higgs-Coulthard, Ph.D.

Guest Writer – Writing for Young Readers

Kat is a middle grade and YA author whose work, including her 2023 novel Junkyard Dogs,  has been praised by Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus as “emotionally-nuanced” and “visceral.” She is an Associate Professor of Education at Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, where she prepares preservice teachers in literacy and writing instruction. 

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Daniel Bowman Jr.

Guest Writer – Nonfiction / Poetry

Daniel Bowman Jr is the author of A Plum Tree in Leatherstocking Country (2012), On the Spectrum: Autism, Faith, & the Gifts of Neurodiversity (2021), and The Autism Journals, a YA graphic novel forthcoming from Oni Press. He teaches creative writing at Taylor University, where he is Editor-in-Chief of Relief: A Journal of Art & Faith and Faculty Advisor to Students for Education on Neurodiversity (SEND).

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