Monadnock Writers’ Group hosted MacDowell fellows Garrard Conley and Caroline Schmidt Saturday at MacDowell’s James Baldwin Library to kick of the group’s fall speaker series.

Conley is author of the memoir “Boy, Erased,” which became a major motion picture. Conley, who grew up in a fundamentalist family in Arkansas, is a survivor of conversion therapy and the host of the “Unerased” podcast. He read from his new work in progress, “All The World Beside,” which is a story of “queer people in history.”

“It’s basically a gay ‘Scarlet Letter,’” Conley explained. “It’s an interesting challenge to be writing about queer people without using the language we have now. They didn’t have words like ‘queer’ or ‘gay’ or ‘trans’ or ‘lesbian.’ As a writer I have to think about, ‘How would queer people have thought about themselves without that language?’ ”

Conley is planning another book about the history of the Evangelical movement in the American South.

Schmidt, an award-winning short-fiction writer, spoke next.

“I’m actually working on two different novels at the same time,” she said with a laugh. ” I don’t recommend it.”

Schmidt has been working on a “slipstream psychological novel” while at MacDowell.

“I’m exploring melancholy and madness as a form of shape-shifting,” Schmidt said. “This book has characters who shape-shift, stage, magic, real magic. It’s about misfitting — misfit as a verb and a noun. It’s about not fitting in, about disability.”

Schmidt, a native of Arizona, gestured outside at the woods surrounding the Baldwin Library.

“I love the desert, but these woods are so beautiful,” she said. “Being at MacDowell is the most incredible gift. It’s just so meaningful.”

The Monadnock Writers’ Group meets the third Saturday of every month at the Peterborough Town Library unless otherwise noted. For information, go to monadnockwriters.org.