Best-selling author Steve Berry, who has more than 15 million books in print, will present a writing workshop at UCF on April 12 to benefit the university’s Public History Center.
Berry’s novels, thrillers with a historic twist, regularly appear on the best-seller lists of The New York Times and USA Today, and he and his wife oversee History Matters, a foundation dedicated to historic preservation.
The three-hour writing workshop, “Lessons from a Bestseller,” includes instruction on fundamentals and advanced techniques applicable to everything from fiction to non-fiction, including suspense, memoir, romance, literary fiction, history and other genres. A lunchtime reception with Berry will follow the workshop, and attendees will have the opportunity to have books autographed and learn about the UCF Public History Center initiative.
The check-in at the Morgridge International Reading Center on the main campus starts at 8 a.m. and the workshop runs from 9 a.m. to noon. The cost is $25 for UCF faculty and staff, $15 for UCF students and $75 for the general public.
The reception will be 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. with a suggested donation of $25.
Reservations can be made by calling 407-823-3817. Parking in Garage A is $5 for the day.
The event will be hosted by the Public History Center in collaboration with Seminole County Public Schools, UCF Department of History, the UCF Book Festival and the reading center.
Berry’s books, such as The Columbus Affair, The Jefferson Key, and The Emperor’s Tomb, have been translated into 40 languages. Historic preservation is one of his interests, so in 2009 he and his wife Elizabeth started their foundation to save endangered historic treasurers.
History is central to all of his novels, and the St. Augustine couple travel around the country to raise money through lectures, receptions , dinners and writers’ workshops for historic-preservation causes.
The UCF Public History Center is housed at the former Student Museum in Sanford. The 1902 building in the middle of the city’s historic district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. It is one of the few surviving examples in Florida of school architecture at the turn of the 20th century.
The center has a classroom with original woodwork and slate boards, a portrait of then-President Theodore Roosevelt and other period artifacts; a Native American room representing a 1,200-year-old Timucua village; and a pioneer room with a log cabin and tools. Grandma’s Attic features old household items and vintage clothes, and the Georgetown and Crooms High School exhibits feature artifacts about the city’s African-American community.
For details about the workshop, contact Bethany Dickens at bethany.dickens@ucf.edu.