Alumni of Seton Hill’s Master of Arts in Writing Popular Fiction program will host their first reunion and working retreat on the College campus beginning on Friday, June 28th and concluding on Sunday, June 30th with commencement exercises for the Class of 2002 Writing Popular Fiction graduates.

Activities scheduled during the weekend include a genre-grouped critique session, a roundtable session titled, “The Real World—Where We Are Now and Where We Are Going” and a business session. In addition, two presentations will be offered.

Attorney Thomas Wettach of Cohen & Grigsby, PC in Pittsburgh will offer the first presentation on Saturday, June 29th. As director of Intellectual Properties Law and head of the Intellectual Property Group at Cohen & Grigsby, Wettach focuses his practice on intellectual property advice and litigation. A substantial amount of his work concentrates on licensing all forms of intellectual property as well as protecting trade secrets and confidential technology. Prior to joining Cohen & Grigsby, Wettach was a partner at Titus & McConomy. Wettach is a member of the Allegheny County Bar Association, the Pennsylvania Bar Association, the American Bar Association and the Pittsburgh Intellectual Property Law Association.

Literary Agent, Donald Maass, will give a public presentation titled, “Taking Your Fiction Back To Its Source” at Seton Hill on Saturday June 29th at 7:00 p.m. in Cecilian Hall. Members of the community are invited to attend. Maass will discuss the reasons for the low success rate of contemporary novels and help authors understand how to go beyond what is safe and formula-bound by tapping into the inner source of great fiction. An independent New York literary agent with eighteen years of experience, Maass is the founder and president of the Donald Maass Literary Agency in New York City, which represents over 100 novelists, including such award-winning authors as mystery writer Anne Perry, science fiction writer Christopher Priest and cartoonist Chris Browne (Hägar the Horrible). Maass himself is the author of The Career Novelist (Heineman, 1996) and Writing the Breakout Novel (Writers Digest Press, 2001). He is also the author of fourteen pseudonymous novels.

For more information about the Writing Popular Fiction graduate degree program at Seton Hill, or the presentation by Donald Maass, please contact Dr. Albert Wendland, associate professor of English, by e-mail at wendland@setonhill.edu or by phone at 724-830-1019.