About Crossroads
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What’s Crossroads? Who are we?
the Founding Four
It’s a conference and a literary festival, a series of writers workshops, crazy fundraisers, literary pop music mash-ups, readings and just about anything else we feel like doing. In a nutshell, we’re a group of literature-loving, community-minded weirdos who thought it’d be cool if Macon had its own writers’ conference.
Cobbling together the little bits of our knowledge with the fantastic help of some friends and great partner organizations–like Macon State College, the 11th Hour and NewTown Macon–the first Crossroads Writers Conference took place in October 2008 at the Georgia College & State University campus in downtown Macon. Not only were we surprised by the hearty turn-out but the sense of community that was forming amongst the area’s writers, some who came to present and others who came to learn.
Emboldened but not foolish, we decided to take another big step forward and gave ourselves some extra time to do so, setting the next Crossroads for February 2010. This time, with significant financial assistance from the Knight Foundation’s Neighborhood Challenge Grant and more generous support from Macon State College, the conference took place on Mercer University’s campus and featured our first literary festival with readings in several venues around College Hill and downtown.
While attendance nearly tripled from the first year and everyone seemed to have a great time, we had so many workshops that attendees were fatigued by the end of the afternoon and the literary festival struggled because it was competing with the conference. And frankly, those things could’ve been planned better. But we learn from our mistakes. Instead of cutting our offerings, we’re going to spread them out better and provide longer breaks. The next literary festival will have its own committee, which can dedicate more attention and resources so it fares better. We’ll never be mistake-free but we’ll always own up to them and do our best to fix what’s broken.
As you can tell, we’re pretty open. We’re open because we’re you, members of the same strange family of writers and exciters, people who feel compelled to put words down and share them. It is, as the kids used to say, how we roll.
That means we’re always looking for more folks to jump in and help, whether it’s an active roll on a committee or just an email with ideas, thoughts, suggestions, or complaints. This is as much your conference as it is ours.
On that note, we’re excited to report we’re in the process of obtaining 501(c)3 status. For the last year, we’ve been generously assisted by the Community Foundation of Central Georgia, who have allowed us the opportunity to learn how to be a nonprofit as we work towards officially becoming one.
Part of our mission is to expand beyond the Conference to have more literary events. Fun stuff too, not just readings (though we like those too, of course). We’re also working to be more involved with the community, on the verge of putting into action plans to foster the love of writing with Macon’s youth.
It’s going to be a good year for Crossroads and we hope you’ll be there with us. Not just for the Conference but for all the other cool stuff too. Your role and your involvement is entirely up to you. Make this a safer place for writing: join us.
