Harriette Austin: Inspiration Behind the Writing Program

Teaching is a career that is filled with as many heartaches as it has rewards. And while a teacher may hope to reach each student, it is not always clear if she is successful. Teachers say that any recognition by students makes it all worthwhile. 

Current and former students of Harriette Austin pay tribute to their favorite educator each year. Austin has inspired her students for almost three decades to dream to become writers and to follow the dream. A writing instructor for the Community Programs at The University of Georgia Center for Continuing Education since 1972, Austin is honored annually with a writers conference which carries her name.  In its nine-year history, the Harriette Austin Writers Conference has gained a national reputation as one of the top writers conferences in the country, and has attracted some of the most desirable names in the publishing industry. 

And now, her students are expanding the reach of her influence through the Harriette Austin Writing Program. The series of creative writing workshops called Elements of Fiction began being offered over the Internet in September 2002. This writing program is built upon the philosophy and techniques used by Harriette Austin in her more than thirty years of teaching Creative Writing at the University of Georgia and other institutions of higher learning. 

Austin has been credited with inspiring several of her students to seek careers in writing and publishing. In fact, a group of her students -- Charles Connor, a faculty member in UGA's College of Education, Beverly Connor, author of the Lindsay Chamberlain Mystery series and the Diane Fallon Mystery series, and Alice Silvian, Executive Director of the South Carolina Partnership for Distance Learning -- formed a small publishing company, Quick Brown Fox Publishers, Inc. The company cosponsored the conference with the Georgia Center in its beginning. In 1999 the conference was integrated into the College of Education of The University of Georgia. 

"She inspired several of us to pursue careers in publishing and writing," Charles Connor said of Austin. "She has served as mentor and gathering point for a community of writers. Because of her kind, benevolent and knowledgeable influence, an incredibly large number of her students have achieved success in writing. This year alone, four of her students will have novels released by national publishers, including St. Martins, Cumberland House, Harlequin-Worldwide and Signet. During the course of her tenure at the University of Georgia, her students have had millions of copies of  novels sold. She is a major influence."

Austin was a stand-in for actress Gail Patrick, at the old Republic Studios, and studied at Yale University, New York's Barnard College, and at the Max Reinhardt Theatre in Hollywood. As a tribute to Austin's career in acting, conference goers are treated to such features as an interactive "murder mystery in the round" and, what has become a favorite event for the conference -- an old-time live radio drama production.

Austin's former students co-sponsor the event, not only to honor the instructor, but also to fulfill Austin's three-decade-long desire to provide aspiring writers with the resources they need to fulfill whatever dream they may have.

The next conference will be held July 15 - 16, 2005, at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education on the University of Georgia campus in Athens, Georgia. For more information about the writing conference or the Harriette Austin Writing Program, contact  Dr. Charles Connor. E-mail cconnor@uga.edu. The Harriette Austin Writing Program, Suite 570, 2351 College Station Rd, Athens, GA 30605-3664. Phone 706-743-3810, Fax 413-622-8007.