Write to Ignite

Hosted by Wayland Baptist University

Saturday, June 3, 2023. (9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. CST)

100% ONLINE  via Zoom invite

Contact our office: 806-291-1106  

 

 

 

 

This is a one-day virtual writing conference open to all writers in any genre. Registration includes the keynote address plus training in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, publishing, and more! Connect with other writers and learn from creative professionals with years of writing experience.

 

Dr. Lisa Dunne - President and Founder of Chula Vista Christian University

Keynote Speaker

Dr. Lisa Dunne is a dynamic, award-winning educator, author, and speaker with 20 years of classroom experience, 10 years of academic leadership, and 10 years of nonprofit leadership. In addition to founding CVCU, the first mentor-based university system of the modern era, she has founded more than 20 Kindergarten to College education models across the nation. 

She holds a Ph.D. in human development from Fielding Graduate University. She is the author of several books, including The Multigenerational Marketplace, a guide to developing Christian communication competencies in the workplace, The Science of Social Influence, a primer on media’s insidious influence on identity, and Relating through the Lifespan, a Christian perspective on lifespan development and intergenerational mentoring. Her podcast is The Communication Architect (available on iTunes and Spotify), and her weekly radio show MindsetMatters can be heard every Saturday at 10:30pm on KPraise Radio. Her latest book, Outsourced: Why America's Kids Need an Education Revolution, is available at OutsourcedTheBook.com and on Amazon. 

You can find out more about her here:  https://www.cvcu.us/president?fbclid=IwAR09vAqb52aa-JGFX489Cw6D2WhVTiBysru2xtRm0naqdy88UTCsv5vt7OQ

 

Conference Schedule

 (Coming Soon)

Workshop Leaders

Dr. Laura Brandenburg

Dr. Brandenburg is an adjunct professor of English and a moonlighting women’s fiction author. She is passionate about writing in all genres—something she feels is a calling from God on her life. She teaches a range of courses within the Professional Writing Program, and her research focuses on the structures of language and the social relationship between language and ethos. Her Christian fiction work has won first place and has been a top-three finalist in various American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) contests.

Ashley Edlin

Ms. Edlin is an Assistant Professor of English at WBU and regularly teaches composition and rhetoric, composition and reading, and professional writing courses. She holds both BA and MA degrees in English from WBU and is is completing an MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University. Edlin has published several co-authored journal articles in technical communication, creative works in Embers, and is writing her dissertation on the resilient communication strategies of the WWII WASPs. She and her husband, Mark, have been married for 8.5 years, and they have a 2-year-old daughter, Addison. Her hobbies include spending time with her family, cooking, and watching movies.

Dr. Erin Heath

Dr. Heath received her bachelors and master’s from Texas Tech University. She earned a Ph.D. in English literature with minors in cinema and media studies and also gender and women’s studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an assistant professor in the Languages and Literature department of Wayland Baptist University. Her book Mental Disorder in Popular Film: How Hollywood Uses Shames and Obscures Mental Disorder just came out in paperback July 2020. 

Dr. Kimberlee Mendoza

Dr. Mendoza is the Dean of Languages & Literature and an English professor at Wayland Baptist University. She is the published author of twelve novels, five novellas, sixteen plays, as well as several short stories, poems, journal articles, and the non-fiction book, Teaching Squirrels . She has an MFA in Writing, a MA in Humanities & Literature, and a Ph.D. in Leadership & Higher Education. In addition to writing, she moonlights as a cover artist for the Wild Rose Press.

Dr. Maria O’Connell

Dr. O’Connell is an Associate Professor of English in the School of Languages and Literature at Wayland Baptist University and has taught American and World Literature on various levels, from freshman to graduate. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, including social systems theory, gender, translation, and social constructions of persons and environment in Western/Southwestern American Literature. She has recently published “Breaking Borders and Breaking Bad: Using Unconventional Choruses to Build a Narcotragedy” in Breaking Down Breaking Bad: Critical Perspectives ed. Matt Wanat and Leonard Engle, and “Of Judges and Fairybook Beasts: The Male Mentor and Violence in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian in Critical Insights: Southwestern Literature ed by Will Brannon . Her current project is examining the role of mothers as heroes in weird literature, and how weird sci-fi in particular is feminist in its approach to women and women’s roles.

Dr. Karen Beth Strovas

Dr. Strovas is Associate Dean of the School of Languages and Literature and Professor of English at Wayland Baptist University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate literature, research, and writing. Strovas is an assistant editor of the peer-reviewed journal Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. She enjoys dividing her time in academia between teaching, mentoring, editing, writing, and engaging in interdisciplinary projects with colleagues. She received her Ph.D. in 2011 from Claremont Graduate University.

Dr. Chloe Brooke

Dr. Brooke is an Assistant Professor of English at Wayland Baptist University. She recently participated in a Shakespeare Association Roundtable about Engaging the Premodern Classroom in Community Engaged learning. Chloe completed her M.A. in English at Texas Woman’s University studying Rhetoric, emphasizing in Feminist Rhetoric. She is a Ph.D. candidate at Texas Tech University where she is finishing her dissertation which surveys the influence of Erasmian humanism on canonical literature.

Dr. Deborah Kuhlmann

Deborah Kuhlmann is a full Professor of English in the School of Languages and Literature at Wayland, where she continues to teach undergraduate courses in writing and literature online. Her home is Texas, but she has travelled the world and is an advocate of international education, so teaching students from around the globe and the United States suits her well. Kuhlmann completed her Ph.D. in English at Texas Christian University and holds an M.A. from the University of Arkansas and a B.A. from Texas Christian University. She has presented numerous conference papers and published over a dozen articles, including reference materials on topics in both British and American literature and in both African American and women’s literature. Her research interests gravitate toward epiphanies and epistemological themes in fiction as well as poetry. In 2023, TCU Press will publish a book edited by Kuhlmann and entitled Sue Monk Kidd: A Collection of Critical Essays, a compilation of scholarly essays by herself and other Wayland colleagues, including Drs. McClenagan, Mayfield and Heath