What Christian Writing Conferences 2023 Actually Look Like
They are events where people who write for Christian audiences gather to learn, network, and sell their work. Some are one-day workshops. Some are multi-day gatherings with keynote speakers, breakout sessions, and manuscript consultations. The 2023 season covered everything from devotional writing to full-length fiction, and the landscape was split between large established conferences and smaller regional gatherings that popped up after the pandemic shifted things around. Registration for most conferences opened between October 2022 and January 2023. Prices ranged from about $150 for a single-day event to $600 or more for a full multi-day conference with hotel packages. The larger conferences like the Catholic Writers Guild Coalition conference or the Christian Writers Guild annual event had tiered pricing: early bird rates if you signed up by a certain deadline, regular rates after that, and on-site registration that was always the most expensive option. I learned this the hard way in 2022 when I showed up without having registered early and paid nearly double what I would have owed if I had just waited three extra weeks. The pricing structure at these events is designed to reward people who plan ahead and penalize the procrastinators. The registration process itself is straightforward. You go to the conference website, select your ticket type, pay online, and receive a confirmation email within 24 to 48 hours. Some conferences ask for a biography or writing sample at registration time because they assign you to breakout sessions or manuscript queries based on your genre. This is useful information to have ready before you even start looking at conferences. A two-paragraph bio and a one-page writing sample will save you time later.
How to Decide Which Conference Is Worth Your Time
Most writers attend their first conference because someone told them they should. That is not a bad reason to start, but it is a insufficient reason to keep spending money. The conferences vary wildly in quality and relevance to your actual goals. A devotional writer will get almost nothing out of a conference focused on novel publishing. A poet will be lost at a conference that is entirely about nonfiction and business writing. I once spent a weekend at a well-publicized Christian writing event and realized halfway through the first keynote that I was the only person in the room working in my genre. The breakout sessions were all tailored to fiction authors and pastoral writers. It was a complete mismatch and a $400 mistake. Before registering for anything, check the published speaker list and session descriptions. If the speakers do not include people who publish in your genre or at the level you are targeting, skip it. Look for conferences where at least half the sessions address the type of writing you actually do. The Christian Writers Guild annual conference, for example, covers a wide range of genres and is one of the better all-purpose options. Regional conferences tend to be more niche, which can be either a benefit or a limitation depending on what you need. Another thing most people miss: the value of a conference is rarely in the keynotes. The keynotes are inspirational and occasionally informative, but the real work happens in the smaller sessions and the hallway conversations. The agent or editor who gives a 20-minute keynote on industry trends will tell you something you could read for free online. The one-on-one manuscript critique you sign up for three months in advance, or the casual conversation with a writer who has already published what you want to publish, is where most of the actual return comes from. Plan your schedule around the critique slots and the small group sessions. Treat the keynote hours as optional background noise.
What Happens at a Typical Christian Writing Conference
A standard two-day conference usually runs like this. Day one opens with a keynote address, followed by three or four breakout sessions where you pick one track and stay with it for the afternoon. There is a vendor hall with publishing houses, book retailers, and writing service providers. Dinner is often a networking meal where you sit at assigned tables with strangers. Day two repeats the pattern with different speakers and sessions, then closes with a final keynote and a farewell reception. The vendor hall is where you will spend the most time outside of sessions. Major Christian publishers like Tyndale, Multnomah, Zondervan, and NavPress often have booths. Independent presses and small Christian publishers are usually there too. Some conferences have pitch sessions where you can sign up for a five-minute slot to present your book idea to an agent or editor. These pitch sessions are highly competitive. You typically need to register for the conference several months in advance to get a slot, and not everyone who applies gets one. The acceptance rate for pitch sessions at larger conferences is roughly 30 to 40 percent. Manuscript critique services are another standard offering. You submit pages in advance, and a published author or editor reads them and gives you written feedback. This is one of the most valuable parts of any conference if your manuscript is close to ready. It is also the part that causes the most frustration when it does not go well. I submitted a devotional manuscript to a critique session at a conference in 2023 and received feedback that was vague and generic. The reader had clearly not engaged with the content deeply. My workaround was simple: I asked for the critique from a different reader the following year at the same conference, and this time the feedback was specific and actionable. The quality of critiques at these events depends entirely on who is assigned to read your work, and there is no reliable way to predict that before you sign up. You just have to try and learn from the outcome.
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Pitfalls to Avoid
The biggest mistake writers make at these conferences is trying to do everything. They sign up for every session, attend every networking event, and collect every business card. By day two they are exhausted and remembering almost nothing from the entire experience. Pick three or four sessions you actually want to attend. Leave blank space in your schedule for conversation. The best connections at these events happen when you are not frantically checking your program and moving from room to room. Another common error is buying books from the vendor hall without having a strategy. Yes, the books are often discounted. That does not mean you need them. I have walked out of conference vendor halls with $200 worth of books I never opened, and that happens to a lot of people. Decide before you arrive which vendors you care about and what you intend to buy. Stick to that list. There is also the issue of conference burnout, which is real and underdiscussed. These events are long, loud, and socially demanding. If you are introverted or easily overwhelmed, two days of continuous networking and session-hopping can leave you drained for a week afterward. Plan for downtime. Skip a session if you need it. Go back to your hotel room and read for an hour. Nobody will remember if you missed one breakout.
Alternatives if a Conference Is Not Right for You
Not every writer needs to attend a conference in person. Online writing communities like the Christian Authors Network, the Absolute Write forums, and genre-specific Discords can provide similar networking opportunities at a fraction of the cost. Many conferences now offer virtual attendance options, which cut the price in half but also reduce the networking value significantly. You will still get the sessions and the keynotes, but you will not meet anyone in a hallway or share a meal with a potential mentor. That trade-off matters more than the price difference suggests. If your goal is specifically to get published, a manuscript critique course or a targeted writing workshop might serve you better than a full conference. Organizations like the Institute for Christian Publishing and the Christian Writers Guild offer quarterly workshops that focus on craft and submission strategy without the conference overhead. These tend to be smaller, more focused, and cheaper than a multi-day event.
Preparing Your Materials Before You Go
You should have your elevator pitch, your bio, and your contact information ready before you arrive. An elevator pitch is a 30-second description of your book or writing project that you can deliver casually when someone asks what you are working on. Write it down. Practice it until it sounds natural and not like you are reciting something memorized. Most conference apps or programs let you add your pitch to your profile, but having it written out separately is safer in case technology fails. Your bio should be two versions: a short one paragraph version for social media and event materials, and a longer three paragraph version for your website and press kit. Bring both. Vendor representatives and potential collaborators will ask for one or the other at different times. Having them prepared in advance means you are not scrambling to write a biography on your phone while standing in line for coffee. Business cards are still useful at these events, despite what people say about them being obsolete. A simple card with your name, genre, website, and email address is sufficient. You do not need anything fancy. I use a basic card from Vistaprint that costs about $20 for 500 copies, and I go through them in about four conferences. If you do not want to invest in physical cards, a QR code linking to your online writer profile works fine, but some people at these events still prefer to scan or write something down rather than pull out their phones.
The Follow-Up That Most Writers Skip
Meeting someone at a conference means nothing if you do not follow up within two weeks. Send a brief email referencing where you met, what you discussed, and one specific thing you want to do next. Something like: "Great meeting you at the Christian Writers Guild conference. I enjoyed our conversation about devotional structure. I am going to revise chapter three based on your suggestion and send it to you next month if you are open to reading it." That is specific, low pressure, and easy to respond to. Generic emails like "It was nice meeting you, let us stay in touch" get deleted or ignored. The specificity is what makes follow-up effective. I keep a spreadsheet of everyone I meet at conferences. Name, conference, how we met, what we discussed, follow-up date, and current status. It takes about ten minutes to set up after each event and saves me from forgetting people I wanted to stay connected with. Without that system, half the contacts you make will fade into nothing within a month. The Christian writing community is small enough that reputations travel. Being professional and responsive in your follow-ups matters more than anything you say during the conference itself. A poorly followed-up connection is worse than no connection at all because it signals carelessness, and in a community this size carelessness gets noticed.
