March 15, 2026

As many creatives know, getting started and continuing with your art is often the hardest part. The Lakefly Writers Conference will transform your abstract passion into a true inferno! Consider the following Breakout Sessions and preview the full schedule here. 

How to Set a Writing Routine
If getting started writing is the hardest part, staying on task is the second hardest. Sarah will share some tips, strategies, and tools to help you build a writing routine that works for you.

Sarah Read’s work appears in Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year (Vols. 10 and 12). Her debut novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, won the Bram Stoker and This Is Horror Awards. She is also the author of the collections Out of Water and Root Rot & Other Grim Tales, and the 2024 novel The Atropine Tree.

A Bulletproof Beginning: Five Ways To Anchor Your Story in Urgency from Word One
Learn how to start your story with immediate momentum. This session explores five techniques for structuring openings that create urgency and draw readers in—while using less information than you might think. Discover how strong structure and strategic restraint can make your first lines impossible to ignore.

Larry F. Sommers seeks new meanings in our common past. He is the author of two historical novels, The Price of Passage and the middle-grade Izzy Strikes Gold!, both published by Three Towers Press. His stories have appeared in Creative Wisconsin, Well Read, and The Saturday Evening Post.

The Magic Pill for Writers Block: How to Write When You’re Not Feeling It
The past few years have been rough on creative ambition. Your muse has been bingeing reruns, and motivation feels impossible. In this session, we’ll trick your brain into generating stories and poems anyway. Bring a blank notebook and leave with at least two new starts—and a repeatable method for the next hundred blank pages.

Wendy Wimmer is an author and editor living in Wisconsin. Her debut short story collection, Entry Level: Stories, won the 2021 Autumn House Fiction Prize and received a starred Kirkus review. Her novel The Doomscroller’s Companion was a finalist for the 2024 AWP James McPherson Award and is forthcoming from University of Wisconsin Press in fall 2026.

The Lakefly Writers Conference, May 1-2, at the Oshkosh Convention Center, is sponsored by the Oshkosh Public Library. Partners include the Oshkosh Community Foundation, Oshkosh Area Writers Club and OrangeHat Publishing.