My Broadleaf Writers Association Experience or 'The Words I Will Not Forget"

The 10th Annual Conference - September 20-21st 2025

Hello Storytellers~

I want to talk about My Broadleaf Writers Association 10^th Annual Conference Experience! So, if you don’t know what Broadleaf is this is straight from them:

The Broadleaf Writers Association’s mission is to enrich and advance the craft of writing for all writers through education, inspiration and community. We’re here to help you become the best writer you can be.

The founder and director of Broadleaf is Zachary Steele, and he is a former coworker and friend of my mother, Elizabeth Costello. Due to that connection, I was able to join the 10^th Annual Conference.

I was extremely nervous, as this was my first writers conference and I didn’t know anyone personally besides Zachary, and even that relationship was more through my mother than directly me. I really felt like a bunny rabbit, I felt small, like I didn’t totally belong there. Everyone else were accomplished published writers, and I didn’t think that my single self-published novel from 2018 meant anything.

I am an introvert and I have little social skills (blame my upbringing, I was badly bullied and an outcast, so I don’t really know how to talk to people, still learning.) I kept finding places to sit alone and don’t know how to approach others and start conversation.

However those I did talk to were outstanding. Its very hard for me to remember faces, because my eyesight is very bad even with glasses, so I don’t know what anyone looks like and can’t recognize anyone, and my memory is bad, so I don’t remember anyone’s names.

But!

This time I’ve managed to remember two names, and I’ll remember two faces. These two people left such an impact on me, I doubt I’ll ever forget them.

Benji Carr and Kim Poovey.

There’s no way to talk about them in order of importance, so I’ll write about them in order of appearance.

I met Kim Poovey on Day 1.

It was lunch time, and I was having trouble finding a place to sit. Everyone else already had filled up the tables, and no one else was really making a place for me. So I was sort of just standing there, looking around hoping I’d find a place where there was no place.

Until Kim Poovey very kindly not only said I could sit with her, she made room for me. She invited me to sit with her, moved her things, made space for me, and assured me she was happy to have me sit with her. She also made room for someone else who came over looking lost and needing a place to sit down in the crowded area.

That alone immediately set her apart. She’s kind, sweet, looks out for others and makes room for people, especially those who are alone.

Once I was seated next to her, we started talking. Our conversation was so natural, like we’ve known each other forever. No awkwardness. We spoke on the importance of libraries, and that my mother and my sister are librarians. I told her a story about how much I loved romance novels when I was growing up and how I snuck around to read Harlequin romance novels when I was like 8 or 10 in the library and got caught by the head librarian. I suppose my experience growing up in libraries is a good piece for another article.

Then we spoke about black characters in fiction, because I showed her my book The Other Side on Amazon, and she loved the fact that I have a black character on the cover. Right then she bought my book, and I signed it for her. The instant support meant so much to me. I’ve found it difficult to make and keep friends as a writer, people keep disappearing or not making tight bonds.

Meeting Kim on Day 1 made my day that day.

Me and Kim Poovey. We took this selfie on Day 2. I always have to have my cat ears! Taken with Kim Poovey’s cellphone.

On Day 2, I met Benji Carr. He was presenting a flash fiction/short story class, and I went to it because I’ve decided to start posting my short stories on “Tell Your Story” and I wanted to know how to do it. I’ve posted two short fiction stories here on my newsletter, Queen Rae of Blood and Bone, and The Blood Queen’s Army. Check them out here, and here.

I hadn’t really talked to Benji yet, but watching him in other panels, he’s funny, and warm, and really smart. I sat in the front row, because I wouldn’t be able to really see. I’ve had 3 eye surgeries, and they’ve taken their toll. I’ve realized that at Broadleaf, that if I sit too far back, I can’t make out the presenter name tags or if there’s a slideshow, I can’t read the slideshow. So front row for me.

Anyway, Benji had these really neat story prompt dice and he had us roll them and write a story based on the image that came up on the dice, along with the prompt he gave us. I’m not giving the class any justice, by the way. It was much better than I am describing it. Especially with the way Benji talks and presents, he’s charismatic and how he talks to the class and not at the class.

My first dice roll came up with an image that looked like a little boy chained to a monster made out of his shadow. So I wrote the following short story in the five minutes we were allotted. Any weird errors about it are genuine, I’ve simply transcribed it from my notebook.

The boy’s shadow had turned into a monster. At first it was a small mewling thing. No one even noticed. But the boy noticed. He fed his monster table scraps at the dining table and pet its head when it curled up next to his pillow at night. The boy and his shadow were like friends. Until the fights began. The boy didn’t understand. Were his parents mad at him? why did they yell at each other like that? The slammed doors, the thrown couch pillows, the crying into hands. Was he the one at fault? The monster grew without table scraps. His claws lengthened, his wide mouth spurted fangs and his white eyes were wide and white, and his tall ears could hear everything. The boy’s feet were chained to the monster’s feet. He was his shadow after all.

My memory fails me here. I know I got applause, and I don’t remember what Benji said anymore. It was after we did our second prompt, that I will likely not forget what Benji said. When we were done writing, Benji asked if anyone would like to share. I said I’d share if no one else wanted to. No one else raised their hands, so I shared. This was that prompt, and I think we were given 7 minutes this time? Naturally I don’t remember. My memory is a sieve. Anything wonky is simply the way I transcribed it. Also the formatting is how I wrote it in my notebook.

The turtle drifted alone for eons. Or has it been only seconds?

The turtle couldn’t remember.

“Who’se out there?” The turtle cried out, desperate for connection, for anyone, someone.

Nothing.

Silence.

The abyss had no answers.

Then there was a light, there, in the distance.

The turtle drifted towards it, with slow paddles of its giant feet.

There was no telling what the light illuminated but anything other than the abyss.

The turtle didn’t know how long the journey to the light took, maybe eons again but the light remained.

The turtle peered at the small burning glow.

Staring up at the turtle were eyes.

“What are you?” The turtle asked.

The eyes had no mouth to speak with.

The turtle with great comprehension realized they were the beginning and the end. It was the turtle who created the eyes. It was the turtle who’s voice had the power to bring forth what they will.

The turtle said, “I grant you eyes to see with, a mouth to speak with, a body to move with. I grant you life.”

The bird appeared, stretching its wings, opening it’s mouth, and said, “I am here.”

The turtle saw it was good, and was pleased.

That entire above short story came from the dice image that was only a turtle. After I read out loud, I recall the room being in a sort of stunned silence. And Benji Carr was looking at me with the strangest look on his face, I’ve never seen someone look at me like that. It felt like he was beholding me.

Then he said, in this awed voice, “Has anyone ever told you how good at this you are?”

I don’t tend to remember what people say to me. I am very much “in one ear out the other.” I tend to be very distracted in conversation, my attention is getting nabbed by things moving around me, the whole “look squirrel” thing. Or I’m listening the voices in my head, focusing on random story elements and ideas that I am thinking up and end up just accidentally not really listening. Someone introduces themselves to me and I’ve forgotten their name instantly.

But not this time. This time, I heard what he said, and it held on to me. It stuck with me.

I said to him, “I was told in undergrad that what I write is trash.”

And he said, “Fuck those guys.”

I don’t believe I’ve ever remembered an entire conversation word for word before. Internalizing a conversation? I can remember how someone made me feel, or remember vaguely what we talked about.

This is different, this is new.

But I think what made this hit so hard, is only five minutes before I took that class, I was writing a journal in the hallway outside the room that I’ll put a little snippet of here.

my writing is shit

Yup. So one minute journalling how awful my writing is, the next having Benji Carr, a journalist, storyteller and playwright who’s work has been featured in The Guardian, ArtsATL and Pembroke Magazine, and has done tons of other things, is telling me how good I am at writing.

Naturally I barely was able to process the compliment.

After the class, we ended up talking again, along with Shaun Hamil (author of A Cosmology of Monsters and The Dissonance and has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop), and another author who I never got her name, and this other woman who I had no idea who she was, mainly about genre basis, and how terribly we’ve been treated by higher-ed programs when writing fantasy and sci-fi in undergrad English and MFA programs.

When talking with Benji Carr again, he was encouraging me so much, really pouring into the wounds that were left by my undergrad program. Then he said two sentences that I haven’t forgotten.

“You aren’t small. You are a creator of worlds.” - Benji Carr

How can you possibly forget something like that?

I entered Broadleaf’s 10^th Annual Conference feeling small. I left with more confidence that maybe, just maybe, I can really work at this “be an author” dream that I’ve had since childhood.

I heard so much about publishing, marketing, branding, that it was more daunting than encouraging. But none of it made me want to give up. It all simply made me want to try harder.

It made me believe that maybe I can do it. It gave me more tools to work with, and gave me a solid idea about what to do. It also made me realize I wasn’t alone. I spend most of my days alone, writing and drawing by myself. Though I have online groups, it’s not the same as human interaction. It’s one thing to post on a Substack wall, and get maybe a like, or maybe a comment, and another to be surrounded by other authors talking to me in real life and validating my existence.

In the end, the Broadleaf conference made me feel like I’m actually a writer, though I already claimed being a writer because I write every day and I have self-published a book, it made me feel like I can actually succeed as a writer. I saw a path ahead that I could climb, rather than tirelessly write alone. Make friends, a way to publish, develop my career.

It was truly amazing and I hope I can go against next year.

Until next time Storytellers,

A.E.