Manor Mill Writers Guild Prose Night
About The Manor Mill Writer’s Guild and Prose Night
Monday, May 20 Featured Author
Turney McKnight
Turney McKnight is a retired attorney and active beef cattle farmer living a few miles north of Madonna, Maryland (Actual post office address is White Hall). His three children and four grandchildren live on adjacent farms.
He grew up in Great Falls, Virginia in a time when that area was still rural. He received a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School. Upon graduation from law school he took a job with a Baltimore law firm and lived near Pimlico, where he exercised racehorses before going to work in the morning., A few years after that, he moved out to the farm country of first Baltimore and then Harford County.
In addition to practicing law, Turney competed for many years as an amateur steeplechase jockey (he took a “gap year” between college and law school to ride races steeplechase races full time in Ireland and England). He owned, trained and rode steeplechasers steadily until retiring from racing in the mid 80's.
Like many lawyers, Turney eventually found a creative writing outlet – in his case a series of pieces published in the now defunct North County News. These led to longer works, some published in regional magazines.
Many of both are included in Tracks in the Sand, a broadly autographical work, at least in the sense that Turney conceived it with the idea of memorializing for his children a slice of time which they would have been too young to remember.
Join us for a monthly prose night at the Manor Mill! We will start with a reading by a published author, follow with a brief Q&A about the author’s work and journey as a writer, and then we will open up the floor for a prose open mic. Come and meet fellow writers and share your work! Snacks will be provided and BYOB.
Schedule
Doors open at 6:45 PM and readings start 7:00 PM up in The Loft and on the second floor when the weather gets cold.
Prose nights are the third Monday of every month.
Open mic readings have a suggested time limit of 7 minutes. Open mic is limited to the first six readers who sign up at the door. Anyone who signs up after that will get priority at the next Prose night. Priority may also be given to new comers.
Open Mic Information
Open mic readings have a suggested time limit of 7 minutes.
Open mic will be limited to the first eight readers who sign up at the door, and anyone who signs up after that will get priority at the next Prose night.
We encourage open mic readers to:
*Rehearse their pieces at home before coming to open mic. Rehearsing at home, out loud and at full volume, will help ensure your piece is within the 7-minute time limit. (Often, reading out loud and at full volume extends the time of a reading.)
*Mark up the pages before you bring them, where to slow down, where to pause to be dramatic, etc.
*Remember that 7 minutes is the maximum time, and stories that are only a few minutes long are welcome!
*Speak slowly, almost as if you are reading in a language foreign to the audience, so that the audience can fully digest your piece. Ears respond more slowly than eyes when taking in words!
2024 UPCOMING Authors
Monday, May 20, 2024
Turney McKnight, former steeplechase jockey, attorney and author, originally from Great Falls, VA.
Turney will read from his books of essays, Tracks in the Sand.
Monday, June 17, 2024
Danielle Ariano will be reading from her new memoir, The Requirement of Grief.
Monday, July 15, 2024
Michelle Brafman will be reading from her novel, Swimming with Ghosts.
Monday, August 19, 2024
Eric D. Goodman is author of seven books and will be reading from his recent works.
Monday, September 16, 2024
Kathleen Fine will read from her novel, Girl on Trial.
Monday, October 21, 2024
Hyeseung Song will read from her new book, Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl.
Monday, November 18, 2024
Richard Chizmar will read from his new novel, Memorials.
December 2024 - [Final date TBD]
We will be announcing a joint poetry-prose holiday pot luck and open mic. Stay tuned!
If you would like to learn more about the Guild meet-ups or have any other inquiries regarding readings at Manor Mill, Please submit the form below!
Susan Keatley, Prose Night Host
Meet Guild Prose Host, Susan Keatley
Susan Keatley is a writer living in Phoenix, Maryland. While getting her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she would look longingly at copies of Science magazine and wish not to be published in the research section, but in the section upfront where someone wrote about what the research meant. Susan has written about science and other topics for the New York Times, the Simons Foundation, and the Princeton Alumni Weekly, and has been a moderator at the Newburyport Literary Festival in her hometown of Newburyport, Massachusetts. She is also at work on a novel. She loves meeting and talking to writers and is thrilled to host the Manor Mill Writers Guild Prose night.