Progressive Rising Phoenix Press announces the release of SPOKES, a novel by Deanna K. Klingel

Progressive Rising Phoenix Press has released Deanna K. Klingel's YA novel, Spokes. Spokes is about  a Catholic girl and a Jewish boy training for a triathlon, who search for clues to solve the mystery of a hit and run killer. Along the way they discover the importance of truth, friendship, and faith. 

Klingel writes primarily, not exclusively, for young adult readers. She has thirteen books published and others in the que. In addition, one of the picture books is also in Spanish, and there are teacher/classroom study guides for two historical fictions. Many of the books have received recognition and awards. Two of her short stories were contest winners. She's a member of SCBWI, ACFW, Catholic Writers Guild, and NCWN. She blogs twice a week at booksbydeanna.com, and travels with her books across the South and beyond, appearing at schools, museums, and events. Her books are widely distributed and are available wherever books are sold.

Klingel is a member of North Carolina Writer's Network-West. She will be hosting a workshop at the NCWN-West's A Day for Writers, at Sylva, NC, on May 6, 2017. Ms. Klingel's topic will be: "The Merry Go Round of Children's Literature". She will discuss how to recognize the types of children's literature, the myths about writing for children, and the writing process for Child Lit and how it differs for each kind of Child Lit. She will also cover working with illustrators and finding the proper publisher for your work. Klingel will go over questions to ask your publisher before signing the contract , and will address how to market Child Lit.

Links for registration and the schedule for A Day for Writers, are here:
http://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_13.html
http://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/p/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html

Make sure to read Glenda Beall's "The making of a Writers Conference" on her blog

Please read Glenda Beall's blog post on "The making of a Writers Conference", on her blog, Writers Circle around the Table.



Here is the link:

 http://www.glendacouncilbeall.com/

Also, note the NCWN-West's page for their writing conference, A Day for Writers, on May 6, 2017, at the Jackson County Public Library, in Sylva, NC:

http://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_6.html

Prose writer Bob Grove to read at Coffee With the Poets and Writers, at the Moss Memorial Library, Wednesday, May 18, 2016, at 10:00 AM

This month, Coffee With the Poets and Writers welcomes Bob Grove. Bob is very entertaining, and will read some of his prose on Wednesday, May 18th, 2016, at 10:00 AM.


Coffee With the Poets and Writers meets every third Wednesday at 10:00 AM, at the Moss Memorial Library, at 26 Anderson Street, Hayesville, NC. The reading will be followed by open mic and the public is invited to attend.

North Carolina Writers' Network-West sponsors Coffee with the Poets and Writers. Please be sure to attend and to bring a friend! Coffee and cookies will be provided. For more information, please call Glenda Beall at: 828-389-4441, or the Moss Memorial Library at: 828-389-3734.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Bob Grove now lives in the mountains of North Carolina. He earned his Bachelor of Arts at Kent State University and his Master of Science at Florida Atlantic University. His diversified curriculum enabled him to teach courses in English, journalism, creative writing, physics, chemistry, biology and psychology.

Bob has been an ABC-TV public affairs director, an on-air personality, and the founder and publisher of Monitoring Times magazine. A prose critique facilitator for the North Carolina Writers’ Network and an officer with the Ridgeline Literary Alliance, he has published seventeen books and hundreds of articles in sixteen national magazines.

Now retired after 35 years as founder of Grove Enterprises, an international supplier of radio communications equipment, Bob has more time to write. Most recently, he has published a mystery novella (Secrets of Magnolia Manor), his memoir (Misadventures of an Only Child), a collection of children’s stories (Adventures of Kaylie and Jimmy) and has written several flash fiction stories as well as some forgettable poetry. He has been awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in the Silver Arts literature competition.

Bob’s public readings are popular as a performance art form, typified by his annual December reading, in costume and dialect, of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the John C. Campbell Folk School.

His collected writings on technical topics (Antenna Basics, Antenna Anthology and Ask Bob) are now available, as is his informative overview of deviant mental behavior (Abnormal Psychology) which he uses as a teaching text in continuing education classes.

All Bob’s publications are available on Amazon Kindle, and you are welcome to visit him at bobgrove.org.

 

NCWN-West's Coffee with the Poets and Writers to feature Brenda Kay Ledford and Nancy Simpson, on Wednesday, April 20, 2016, at 10:00 AM at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

The North Carolina Writers' Network-West's Coffee with the Poets and Writers will feature poets Brenda Kay Ledford and Nancy Simpson, on Wednesday, April 20, 2016, at 10:00 AM. The event will be held at the Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson Street, Hayesville, North Carolina, and is open to the public. As always, the readings will be followed by an open mic.

Brenda Kay Ledford is a seventh-generational native of Clay County, North Carolina. She was an honor graduate of Hayesville High School and earned her Master of Arts in Education from Western Carolina University. She studied Journalism at the University of Tennessee and was editor of "Tri-County Communicator" at Tri-County Community College. She holds a diploma of highest honors from Stratford Career Institute in Creative Writing.

Ledford's prose and poetry have appeared in many publications including: "Angels on Earth Magazine," "Our State Magazine," "Asheville Poetry Review," "Appalachian Heritage," and 30 anthologies printed by Old Mountain Press. Finishing Line Press published three award-winning chapbooks. Aldrich Press printed her poetry book, "Crepe Roses," that received the 2015 Paul Green Multimedia Award from North Carolina Society of Historians. She has received the Paul Green Award seven times for her literary works and collecting oral history. Ledford blogs at: http://blueridgepoet.blogspot.com.

Nancy Simpson is the author of three poetry collections: Across Water, Night Student and Living Above the Frost Line, New and Selected Poems published at Carolina Wren Press. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a B.S. in Education from Western Carolina University. She received a N.C. Arts Fellowship and co founded NC Writers Network-West, a non profit, professional writing organization serving writers living in the remote mountains west of Asheville. For more than thirty years she has been known as “beloved teacher” to thousands of young writers.

Simpson’s poems have been published in The Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Seneca Review, New Virginia Review, Prairie Schooner and in other literary magazines. Her poem, “Night Student” was reprinted in the anthology Word and Wisdom, 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry and in Literary Trails of North Carolina. Seven of her poems are featured in Southern Appalachian Poetry, a textbook anthology published at McFarland Press. The Southern Poetry Review, Armstrong College in Savannah, Georgia included one of her poems in their 50^th Anniversary issue, Don't Leave Hungry and a new poem in their recent issue featuring Georgia poets. Her poem “Carolina Bluebirds” was included in The Poets Guide to Birds, an anthology edited by Judith Kitchen and Ted Kooser, and her poem “Pink Pantsuit” was featured recently in Ted Kooser’s widely read “American Life in Poetry” newspaper column. Simpson blogs at: http://nancysimpson.blogspot.com/.

For more information, please contact Glenda C. Beall at 828-389-4441.

Coffee with the Poets and Writers, Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 10:00 AM, at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

Coffee with the Poets and Writers

Hayesville, NC

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2016, 10:00 AM

MOSS MEMORIAL LIBRARY

Our first meeting this year of Coffee with the Poets and Writers will feature two members of the North Carolina Writers’ Network West.  This event will be held at the Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson St, Hayesville, NC 28904.

Joan Howard, well-published poet from Hiawassee, Georgia will share her poetry with us.  Her poems have been published in the Aurorean, Miller's Pond, The Road Not Taken:The Journal of Formal Poetry, Lucid Rhythms, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Eclectic Muse, Victorian Violet, the Deronda Review, Our Pipe Dreams, The Lyric, GPS The Reach of Song, a chapbook, Red Fox Run, and POEM.

Miriam Jones Bradley, from Henderson County, NC, is the author of a children’s book series, The Double Cousins Mysteries, a memoir, All I Have Needed-A Legacy for Life, and You Ain’t From Here, Are Ya, Reflections on Southern Culture from an Outsider. Miram' link is: http://www.miriamjonesbradley.com/

The latter is a collection of articles by Bradley, from a South Carolina newspaper. She will read and speak about her writing experience.

Glenda Beall, a Clay County Representative for NCWN West, facilitates this monthly event each year from March – December. 

Everyone is invited. You can meet other writers, learn about writing events in the area and read a short prose piece or a couple of poems during Open Mic. There is no charge.

Join some of us for lunch after the meeting at Angelo’s on the square.

We appreciate the Moss Library providing a room for us. Coffee with the Poets and Writers is sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network West which is a program of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. 

For more information contact Glenda Beall, 828-389-4441.

NCWN-West--What I see in the future, by Glenda Council Beall

NCWN-West – What I see in the future

What a remarkable organization Marsha Warren built in western NC in the early 90s. Eight counties with representatives in each one, counties in bordering states where writers needed a community, and one person to head the group.

That was twenty years ago, and many of those early writing groups are still active here in Clay and Cherokee counties. Because of the program Warren created, beginning writers went on to publish poetry books, novels and memoirs. 

But we are in the twenty-first century and changes have taken place in society, even here in the Appalachian Mountains. The under-fifty folks research online, take courses online, seek all kinds of information from where to publish to how to publish. They find hundreds of sources for their questions. But there are no guarantees that what they read online is fact or correct. Recently I read an article on how to prepare a manuscript. Comments following this article disagreed with half of what the article said. “Today it is done this way…” “That is the old way. Nobody does that now.”

What are we to believe? Confusion reigns with all the various opinions on the Internet. Without experienced writers and poets to share accurate information, new writers can spend hours making mistakes with their submissions and all things concerning getting their work out to the public, the major goal of most of us. I am asked many times over and over, how do I prepare a manuscript, can you help me with a cover letter, what is a query letter and what should I say. Or I am asked, where can I take a class for beginning writers, is there a class around here for someone who has retired and is finally ready to begin writing which I always wanted to do?

NCWN-West has the experienced published writers throughout the region. We have qualified instructors for all genres. But how to get the word out is the question now. Few want to travel many miles to attend an all day workshop, it seems, although the opportunity to discuss writing, questions and answers, should be a priority. We learn so much from each other when we get together. But we must beware online groups where some of the people who give advice are not accurate. I have seen incorrect writing advice given online to unsuspecting newbies.

The future of NCWN-West, I believe, is bringing in men and women who have computer expertise. People who know how to set up meetings on Skype so writers all over the region can participate in discussion of the best ways to provide local writers with what they need here in the mountains.

We have a Facebook page for NCWN West that has been dormant for several years until this week.  We have well-qualified writers who want to teach online classes for NCWN-West members. But who will make that happen? We need members who understand the Internet and can help us get those classes online. These are our future leaders. In ten years there will be new opportunities and we must be ready to jump in.

Those of us who worked for many years as part of NCWN-West are ready to turn it over to perhaps younger, but definitely energized people who move us forward to the next level. Who will do that?

Help us find those who are willing and able to carry on our mission, but take us up a step.

Glenda Beall
glendabeall@msn.com
828-389-4441

Coffee with the Poets and Writers in a new venue, Wed. Sept. 9, 2015, 10:30 AM at Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC

Summer is winding down and there is no finer way to celebrate the beginning of fall than attending Coffee with the Poets and Writers, a monthly event that will be held Wednesday, September 9, 10:30 a.m. at Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC. We will meet in the computer lab. The public is invited and there is no charge. Bring a poem or short prose, 1500 words or less, and read at Open Mic.

Our featured member of NCWN-West this month is Don Long who was born and raised in Sebring, Florida even though his mother’s family hails from Western North Carolina, East Tennessee, and North Georgia. After two years of college Don enlisted in the Army as a Private. He was later commissioned and earned his wings as a helicopter and airplane pilot. This earned him the chance to fly helicopters in Vietnam for two one-year tours. In 1980 he retired as Lieutenant Colonel.

After retiring he worked with the Federal Government as a Safety Professional specializing in Aviation Safety, Firing Range Safety, Office Safety, Explosive Safety, and Tactical Operations Safety in the United States and Germany with short forays into Bosnia, Croatia, and Macedonia.

After retiring a second time in 2000 he began splitting his time between Winter Park FL and Murphy, NC. The two professions allowed him to live in or visit over 20 countries.

Starting in his teen years and all throughout his entire adult life he wrote poetry, mostly for his consumption, but on request, he wrote poems for special occasions. For a short while after retiring from the Army he had a business called “People Poems” wherein he wrote poems for others for a fee after they provided him pertinent information. The business was doing well, Don says, but he obtained a time-consuming position with the government which necessitated closing the business.

Publishing poetry has never been one of his goals. Don’s poems have not been published because he does not submit them for publication, except for some local newspapers. He writes poems for personal reasons and he writes rhyming poetry which many people enjoy. Always quick with humor, Don says he must have missed the poetry “revolution” meaning the time when free-verse poetry became more accepted.

One of his poems, “I’m Glad It’s Mine” has been used during citizenship swearing-in ceremonies in central Florida and for central Florida Flag Day ceremonies. Also, one of his combat stories was published in a compilation called “The Harsh and the Heart” and “Vietnam Helicopter Crew Member Stories, Volume 2”.

He has a BA in Psychology, MS in Personnel Counseling and Human Development, and a Commercial Pilots license for airplanes and helicopters. He is a member of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators, (ISASI), Order of the Purple Heart, Vietnam Helicopter Pilot Association (VHPA), Army Aviation Association of America (AAAA) and others.

He and his wife, Marti, have been married for 31 years. Their 15 children and grandchildren live in central Florida, California and north Georgia.

Contact NCWN-West Representative, Glenda Beall, at 828-389-4441 or glendabeall@msn.com for more information. North Carolina Writers’ Network-West is a program of the North Carolina Writers’ Network