The Woodstock Writers Festival is a dream come true--a collection of writers and their readers who meet for one glorious weekend in Woodstock, NY, the most famous small town in the world. We get together for workshops, panels, readings, parties and more. Our 2012 event will take place from April 19-22, 2012. Go to WoodstockWritersFestival.com

This year's theme is Occupy Woodstock. To that end we will have panels on resilience, poetry and politics, politics and pop culture, the art and craft of songwriting, the serious business of being funny, an agent and publishers panel, and a look at the writing of memoir.

This year we'll present the first ever Festival Story Slams! Writers will get a chance to win fabulous prizes, and embarrass themselves in front of a willing audience.

Among the writers who will grace our stage in April are Augusten Burroughs, William Kennedy, Kurt Andersen, Abigail Thomas, Ann Hood, Shalom Auslander, Sonia Sanchez, Mark Whitaker and many many more.

On the Friday that the festival begins, we're also offering intensive writing workshops on topics as divergent as the personal essay (with Marion Winik), the literary blockbuster (Susan Brown), function and form in poetry (Gretchen Primack), performing a monologue (the TMI Project), collaborating (Rivka Tadjer and Roberto Gottardello), and self-publishing an e-book (Rick Tannenbaum).

As usual, there will be laughter, there will be tears, and there will be drinking. You can bet on that.

For reasons that escape me at the moment, I am the executive director of this whole shebang. What I do is delegate as much responsibility as others are willing to take on. I am brilliant at this.