Public Speaking & Workshops

I've given talks or classes at venues including:

• The Faulkner Society conference, New Orleans
• American Society of University Women chapters
• Rancho La Puerta spa in Baja, California
• Florida International University, Miami
• Auburn Seminary, New York
• Duke University Divinity School, Durham, NC
• Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan
• UNC, Chapel Hill, NC
• Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City
• Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi, India

In Spring 2007, I was a scholar-in-residence in the Duke University English Department, teaching two courses in fiction writing.

My history as a speaker includes a stint as a live-television reporter and commentator for North Carolina's public TV network, three nights a week for three years of the state legislative sessions.

Topics for speaking engagements include:

When to Hold 'Em, When to Fold 'Em - (Deciding when to compromise and when to stick to your guns-in art and life)

Turning Your Journal into a Novel or Memoir

How Pilgrimage Works

Spiritual Transformation in a Time of Religious Terrorism - (my winter in a Hindu holy city)

If You Love to Write, But Don't Know What to Write About

The Nuts and Bolts of Writing about the Supernatural

Five Tips on Following Your Bliss

Reading India: the Literature that Seduced America

The Creative Trance - (offered with my husband clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist Bob Dick, Ph.D.)

Workshops I've led include:

• Getting An Agent
• Writing Powerful Non-Fiction
• The Heart of Your Novel
• Writing Over Fifty
• How to Write a Book
• Word Play
• Getting Published
• How to Hear the Voice of God

books by
Peggy Payne: