Noted screenwriter and novelist Lou Berney and celebrated poet Douglas Goetsch will headline the Oklahoma City University Creative Writing Festival “Inventing Fantastic Stories” on the OCU campus from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 27.

The creative writing festival, open to the public and free of admission, brings together local writers at all levels to talk about the writing of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and screenwriting.

Berney, an Oklahoma City native, has written feature screenplays and created TV pilots for, among others, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Focus Features, ABC, and Fox. He is the author of THE ROAD TO BOBBY JOE, a collection of stories, and his short fiction has appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, New England Review, Ploughshares, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. He has taught at the University of Oklahoma, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and in the MFA program at Saint Mary's College in California. GUTSHOT STRAIGHT, his first novel, was written during the 2007-2008 film and TV Writers Guild strike, and is slated for publication in January 2010.

Goetsch is an acclaimed poet who has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Donald Murray Prize for creative non-fiction, and numerous other honors. He is the author of three full-length collections of poetry and four prize-winning chapbooks. His poems, essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Poetry, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, The American Scholar, and Best American Poetry. Currently he is Poet-in-Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma, where he teaches in the MFA Creative Writing program.

Also teaching workshops at the festival are OCU Creative Writing Professors Danita Berg and Terry Phelps. Workshops will be available in freewriting, writing invention, plotting and structuring a work, and how to create characters. There will also be a session with Berney and Goetsch on the writing life and publication, as well as creative readings and opportunities for book signings.

OCU plans a writing contest for local high school students, with scholarships awarded for the winning entries, as part of the festivities. The event will take place in the Walker Center, with parking in the lots immediately behind the building, off of N.W. 27th and Florida. OCU would appreciate advance registration of participants by e-mailing Professor Danita Berg at drberg@okcu.edu with your name and writing affiliation.