Mary Ricketson and Brenda Kay Ledford, poets from Murphy and Hayesville, will read selected poems from their published collections on Tuesday, July 18, 5:30-7:00 pm at Cherokee County Arts Council, 33 Valley River Ave, Murphy NC, across from the Mason Jar and Curiosity Bookstore.
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| Mary Ricketson |
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| Brenda Kay Ledford |
Everyone is invited. Please join us. No admission charge.
Local writers CarolLynn Jones and Mary Ricketson will read from their work at the Literary Hour Thursday, May 18, at 7 pm in the Keith House Living Room of the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. The Literary Hour is sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network-West and is free and open to everyone.
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| CarolLynn Jones |
Mary Ricketson
Mary Ricketson is an award-winning poet, mental health counselor, and blueberry farmer who lives in Murphy. Her published collections are “I Hear the River Call My Name,” “Hanging Dog Creek,” “Shade and Shelter,” “Mississippi: The Story of Luke and Marian,” “Keeping in Place,” and “Lira, Poems of a Woodland Woman,” and “Precious the Mule.” Ricketson won first place in the 2011 Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest 75th anniversary national poetry contest. Inspired by nature and her role as a mental health counselor, her poems reflect the healing powers of nature, a path she follows from Appalachian tradition, with the surrounding mountains as midwife for her words. She is also known for her monthly column, “Woman to Woman,” which runs in “The Cherokee Scout.”
Writer and poet Glenda Beall, coordinator for NCWN-West, will host the
event. The Literary Hour at the folk school started in 1995 and is offered every third Thursday of the month through November. “Our goals for the Literary Hour at the folk school are to bring local writers and any member of NCWN who is in the area to the campus to share their work,” Beall said.
The John C. Campbell Folk School offers classes in folk arts and crafts and storytelling. For information about the school, you can find its webpage and contact information at https://www.folkschool.org/. Students and faculty of the school are welcome to attend the readings.
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| Louise Runyon |
January 2023 begins a new year for Mountain Wordsmiths, an online writers’ gathering sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network-West. Our first gathering will meet on Thursday morning, January 26, at 10:30 a.m. on Zoom, and our featured speaker will be poet Louise Runyon, who will be sharing poetry from her fifth and most recent book of poems, Where Is Our Prague Spring?
Her book examines Runyon's deep love for the mountains of Western North Carolina, her childhood experience of love here, and her attempts to reconcile this love with the hatred and division found in the present. A great-niece of Lucy Morgan, founder of the renowned Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina, Runyon honors her visionary and activist family in these poems.
A resident
of Sylva, NC , Runyon was born and raised in New York City but grew up at
Penland School in the summertime. She lived most of her adult life in
Atlanta before coming back to western North Carolina in 2019. A dancer and
choreographer as well as a poet, she is Artistic Director of Louise Runyon Performance Company. The publication of her new book is supported by the
Jackson County Arts Council.
Poet Catherine Carter of Western
Carolina University says, “…Runyon interrogates the
place and her family’s long history there to illuminate a complicated tradition
of Appalachian progressivism dating both back to and forward from the
Trail of Tears. These thoughtful poems evoke an Appalachia that few
outsiders know: simultaneously progressive and conservative, woven into the
wider world in unexpected ways, and rooted deeply in the labor and vision of
women.”
NC
Writers’ Network-West is continuing to take precautions as we stay in touch
and use technology to share our writing. We will offer writing
events and writing classes online with some writers’ groups now meeting
in person with careful safety guidelines.
Mountain Wordsmiths will meet via Zoom on
the fourth Thursday of each month Those wishing to attend our gatherings
may contact Carroll Taylor at vibiaperpetua@gmail.com
to receive the Zoom link. Also, those who wish to participate in Open Mic may
sign up upon entering the meeting. We welcome those who would simply like to
listen to the beauty of wordsmithing.
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| Ronald Moran |
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| Jonathan K. Rice |
