Co-founders of Rose Metal Press, an independent, not-for-profit publisher, and an acclaimed Kentucky poet will lead a publishing conference at Berea College on March 26. Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney, co-founders of Rose Metal Press, and Affrilachian poet Bianca Spriggs, will cover various topics, including: networking, working with an agent, finding a publisher, publishing independently and more. The conference will be held in Baird Lounge in the alumni building from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Writers with a completed manuscript of the work they want published are encouraged to sign up for a ten-minute session with the editor and publisher of Rose Metal Press.

This event, held during Women's History Month, costs $60. Writers interested in attending this conference should call Berea College's learning center at (859) 985-3404 or email learning_center@berea.edu to reserve a seat. Berea College students are required to pay a $10 refundable fee to reserve a seat.

Beckel has worked professionally in publishing for more than ten years at publishing houses such as Pearson Education, Beacon Press and Blackwell Publishing, and for the monthly magazine Physicians Practice. She has worked in many areas of publishing, including consumer and trade magazines, academic journals, literary journals, websites, textbooks and literary books. She is a published poet and received her master's degree in publishing and writing from Emerson College.

Rooney, author of the essay collection "For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs" (Counterpoint, 2010) and the memoir "Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object" (University of Arkansas Press, 2009), won the 2007 Gatewood Prize from the feminist publisher Switchback Books for her poetry collection, "Oneiromance" (an epithalamion). Her collaborative collection with Elisa Gabbert, "That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness," was published by Otoliths in 2008. She lives in Chicago where she works as visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at DePaul University.

Affrilachian poet and Cave Canem Fellow, Bianca Spriggs, is a freelance instructor of composition, literature and creative writing. She holds degrees from Transylvania University and University of Wisconsin. She is a recipient of an Artist Enrichment Grant from Kentucky Foundation for Women, a Kentucky Humanities Council Lecturer and the creator and programmer of the Gypsy Poetry Slam featured annually at Kentucky Women Writers Conference. Pushcart Prize winner and National Book Award Finalist, Patricia Smith, calls Bianca’s work, “an aggressive signature that is deftly crafted, insightful and often achingly lyrical.” Having lived most of her life in Kentucky, Bianca’s poems reflect the trials and triumphs of growing up as a woman of color in a border state.

Heralded as “the new standard bearer for Affrilachian Poets" by founding member, Frank X Walker, Bianca Spriggs is the author of "Kaffir Lily" (Wind Publications) and "How Swallowtails Become Dragons" (forthcoming from Accents Publishing). Spriggs' work may also be found in the anthologies, New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings and America! What's My Name? and in the journals, Pluck!, Union Station Magazine, Caduceus, Alehouse, Torch and Appalachian Heritage

For more information contact Berea College’s Learning Center at (859) 985-3404 or email learning_center@berea.edu.