Laurie Wagner Buyer

Laurie Wagner Buyer is joining us today to talk about how she came to be involved with Story Circle Network. Laurie is an award-winning novelist and poet. Her works include Across the High Divide, Side Canyons, Spring’s Edge and When I Came West. Although she hasn’t always been a Texas girl, she is now.

Welcome, Laurie.

A Nurturing Organization

Story Circle Network intrigued me the first time I heard about the organization some years ago, but they were based in Austin and I was living in the Rocky Mountain West. Then a generous-hearted woman named Susan Albert Wittig reviewed my memoir, Spring’s Edge: A Ranch Wife’s Chronicles (University of New Mexico Press) for SCN and I paid attention again. I knew that SCN and I would cross paths at some point, though I didn’t know I would have to move to Texas for that to happen.

SCN was the one writer’s group that I knew about in the hill country area where my singer/songwriter husband and I made our new home. I kept the file card with the SCN contact information in my desk drawer for some months and then one day, hungry for contact with other women and other writers, I brought up the website and feasted my eyes on all the grand things SCN members were doing. And, best of all, the annual conference was coming up.

I emailed Susan and she encouraged me to submit a proposal to present a workshop. I wasn’t selected for that role, but I was asked to be part of the “Getting Published” panel. This, at last, was my chance to meet this wonderful group of encouraging and nurturing women, all of whom were dedicated to telling women’s stories.

I’m truly excited to be involved with SCN and I can’t wait to meet everyone at the Wyndham on February 5th. I’ll be bringing my newest release, another memoir titled When I Came West (University of Oklahoma Press), which took five years from pitch to publication to create. I’m anxious to share what I have learned about various types of publishing—including local and regional, university, national, independent, self-publishing and the newest rage, e-books.


Thank you, Laurie.

In addition to her memoir and books, Laurie Wagner Buyer also has three collections of poetry: Glass-eyed Paint in the Rain, Red Colt Canyon and Across the High Divide, which won the Western Writers of America Spur Award in Poetry and was named a Willa Cather Literary Award Finalist. Laurie has received many awards for her work.

As Laurie said, you can catch her at the fifth national Story Circle Network Conference in Austin, Texas, on February 5th. I’m moderating the Getting Published panel and am looking forward to meeting her. You’ll also find her on GoodReads. Even if you can’t come to the conference, you get to meet her here today and ask questions or just say “hi.”