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

Don't miss The Literary Hour at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC, March 16,2017 at 7:00 PM

On Thursday, March 16th, 2017 at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School and NC Writers Network- West are sponsoring The Literary Hour, an hour of poetry and prose reading held at Keith House on the JCFS campus, Brasstown, NC. This reading is usually held on the third Thursday of the month. It is free of charge and open to the public. Poet Joan Howard and writer Bob Grove will be the featured readers. Both of these authors are residents of the area and published extensively. It should be an entertaining evening.

Joan Howard: Her poetry has been published in The Lyric, The Road Not Taken: The Journal of Formal Poetry, Lucid Rhythms, Victorian Violet, Our Pipe Dreams, Aurorean, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Miller's Pond, the 2012 Georgia Poetry Society's anthology Reach of Song, POEM, Wayfarer, and others.

Joan is a former teacher, a current member of North Carolina Writers' Network-West, and has studied German and English Literature.  Howard goes birding and kayaking and spends time in Athens, Georgia, and the beautiful waters of Lake Chatuge in Hiawassee, Georgia.

Bob Grove: Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Bob now lives in the mountains of North Carolina. Including studies at Cleveland State University, Baldwin-Wallace College and the University of South Florida, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree at Kent State University and his Master of Science degree at Florida Atlantic University. His diversified curriculum enabled him to teach courses in English, journalism, creative writing, general science, physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, space science 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 a director of the Ridgeline Literary Alliance, he has published 19 books and hundreds of articles in 21 magazines.

Now retired after 35 years as founder of Grove Enterprises, an international supplier of radio communications equipment, Bob has more time to write. 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 poetry. He has been awarded several gold medals in the North Carolina Silver Arts literature competition.

Bob’s public readings are popular as a performance art form, typified by his well attended annual reading, in costume and British dialect, of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the John C. Campbell Folk School. He has been a featured speaker at 14 national conventions and a U.S. Congressional committee.

His collected writings on technical topics (Antenna Basics, Antenna Anthology and Ask Bob) are now available online, as is his informative Abnormal Psychology which he uses as a teaching text in continuing education classes, and Antiquing: A Collector’s Guide for appraising and auctioneering.

Several of Bob’s books are available on Amazon Kindle, and a sampling of his shorter works may be viewed on his website: bobgrove.org.

News Alert! Coffee with the Poets and Writers resumes on Wed. March 15, 2017, at 10:30 AM at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC, with featured poet Catherine Carter

Come on out to Coffee with the Poets and Writers, fellow poets and prose writers!

When: Wednesday, March 15, 2017, at 10:30 AM
Where: Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson St., Hayesville, NC. Phone #828-389-8401
What to bring: Something to read for open Mic.
Who is reading? That would be Catherine Carter who directs the English Education Program at Western Carolina University.

Catherine Carter: Born on the eastern shore of Maryland and raised there by wolves and vultures, Catherine Carter lives with her husband in Cullowhee, near Western Carolina University, where she teaches in the English Education and Professional Writing programs. Her most recent full-length collection is The Swamp Monster at Home (LSU, 2012); her first, The Memory of Gills (LSU, 2006) received the 2007 Roanoke-Chowan Award from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association.  Her chapbook Marks of the Witch won Jacar Press’ 2014 chapbook contest; other awards include the 2013 poetry award from Still: The Journal, the 2014 Poet Laureate’s award from the North Carolina Poetry Society, placing twice in the Asheville Poetry Review’s annual William Matthews Prize poetry contests, and several Pushcart Prize nominations.  Her work has also appeared in Best American Poetry 2009, Orion, Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Tar River Review, and Ploughshares, among others.  She does editorial work for Cider Press Review and One.


Don't miss this great poet at Coffee with the Poets and Writers, sponsored by the North Carolina Writers Network-West. This event is scheduled the third Wednesday of each month at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC. 

Catherine will be teaching a poetry workshop on May 6, 2017 at A Day for Writers, a writing conference in Sylva, NC, at the Jackson County Public Library. Her topic will be: 'Free Verse Isn’t’: Sound and Structure in Free Forms". Here is the link for A Day for Writers: http://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/p/v-behaviorurldefaultvmlo.html

Three poets from NCWN-West featured in ETSU's Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine

Three poets from North Carolina Writers' Network West have poems featured in East Tennessee State University's Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine. The issue is titled "The Future of Appalachia", Vol. 32, No. 2.  Here is the link for the publication: http://www.etsu.edu/cas/cass/nowandthen/.

Nancy Simpson's poem "Accounting" appears from her book, Living Above the Frost Line: New and Selected Poems, Carolina Wren Press.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 50th 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.

Kathryn Stripling Byers' poem "Last Light" is included from the book Descent, LSU press. Byer was raised on a farm in Southwest Georgia, where the material for much of her first poetry originated. She graduated from Wesleyan College, Macon, Georgia, with a degree in English literature, and afterward, received her MFA degree from UNC-Greensboro, where she studied with Fred Chappell and Robert Watson, as well as forming enduring friendships with James Applewhite and Gibbons Ruark. After graduation she worked at Western Carolina University, becoming Poet-in-Residence in 1990.


Her poetry, prose, and fiction have appeared widely, including Hudson Review, Poetry, The Atlantic, Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and Southern Poetry Review. Often anthologized, her work has also been featured online, where she maintains the blogs "Here, Where I Am," and "The Mountain Woman." Her body of work was discussed along with that of Charles Wright, Robert Morgan, Fred Chappell, Jeff Daniel Marion, and Jim Wayne Miller in Six Poets from the Mountain South, by John Lang, published by LSU Press. Her first book of poetry, The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, was published in the AWP Award Series in 1986, followed by the Lamont (now Laughlin) prize-winning Wildwood Flower, from LSU Press. Her subsequent collections have been published in the LSU Press Poetry Series, receiving various awards, including the Hanes Poetry Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Poetry Award, and the Roanoke-Chowan Award.

Byers served for five years as North Carolina's first woman poet laureate. She lives in the mountains of western North Carolina with her husband and three dogs and is a Jackson County Representative for the North Carolina Writers’ Network-West.

Glenda Barrett's poem "The Minnie Shook Place" appears from her book When the Sap Rises, Finishing Line Press. Barrett, a native of Hiawassee, Georgia, is an artist, poet, and writer. Her work has been widely published yearly since her first writing class in 1997 and has appeared in: Woman's World, Farm & Ranch Living, Country Woman, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Journal of Kentucky Living, Nantahala Review, Rural Heritage, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Kaleidoscope Magazine and many more.

Her poetry chapbook, When the Sap Rises, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2008. She has completed two more books since that time, a full-length poetry book which is currently under review by a publisher and a book of Appalachian essays. Barrett worked many years in various healthcare system jobs and retired due to a form of Muscular Dystrophy.
 
Barrett is very grateful to be able to devote her time to the two things she loved as a child, painting and writing. She has two grown children and lives with her husband of forty-two years in the North Georgia mountains.

The Literary Hour at John C. Campbell Folk School, to have open mic on February 16, 2017, 7:00 PM, Brasstown, NC

Co-sponsored by the John C. Campbell Folk School and the North Carolina Writers' Network-West

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

Poet Maren O. Mitchell has work published in Pedestal Magazine Issue #79 with an audio link

Poet Maren O. Mitchell has had her poem "Camouflage Addict", published in issue #79 of Pedestal Magazine, an webzine of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and interviews. The poem is published with an audio link. You can access the poem here.

Maren O. Mitchell’s poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, The Pedestal Magazine, Poetry East, The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop, The World Is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins, Chiron Review, Hotel Amerika, Iodine Poetry Journal, The Lake (UK), Appalachian Heritage, The South Carolina Review, Southern Humanities Review, Skive (AUS), The Classical Outlook, Town Creek Poetry, Appalachian Journal, Pirene’s Fountain, Wild Goose Poetry Review and elsewhere. Her work is included in Negative Capability Press Anthology of Georgia Poetry, The Southern Poetry Anthologies, V: Georgia & VII: North Carolina and Sunrise from Blue Thunder. 

Mitchell's poems are forthcoming in The Lake, Poem, Chiron Review and Appalachian Heritage. Her nonfiction book is Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide (Line of Sight Press, 2012) www.lineofsightpress.com  and is available on Amazon.

Mitchell has taught poetry at Blue Ridge Community College, Flat Rock, NC, and catalogued at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. In 2012 she received 1st Place Award for Excellence in Poetry from the Georgia Poetry Society. For over twenty years, across five southeastern states, she has taught origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.

A native of North Carolina, in her childhood Mitchell lived in Bordeaux, France, and Kaiserslautern, Germany. After moving throughout the southeast U.S., she now lives with her husband in Young Harris, Georgia, on the edge of the national forest.

Fall Conference Pre-Registration Deadline is October 28

Fall Conference happens November 4-6 at the Raleigh Marriott Crabtree Valley.  Registration is now open at www.ncwriters.org;  pre-registration ends Friday, October 28.

With some 200 writers in attendance, as well as dozens of faculty and publishing professionals, the North Carolina Writers’ Network 2016 Fall Conference is the largest writing conference in the state and one of the biggest and most inclusive in the country. It’s a great chance for writers to network, but more importantly, it’s a chance for beginners and bestselling authors alike to focus on writing for an entire weekend and quickly improve their craft.
2016 North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Margaret Maron, of

Willow Springs, will give the Keynote Address.

Maron is the five-time Agatha Award-winning mystery writer of the Deborah Knott series, which is set in Johnston County. In 2015, she was given a lifetime achievement award by Bouchercon, the world mystery convention.

Saturday’s luncheon will feature three authors from UNC Press’ Savor the South series: Debbie Moose, Bridgette A. Lacy, and John Shelton Reed. They’ll talk about how good food writing is about so much more than just food.

2014 North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee and current NC poet laureate Shelby Stephenson will be the featured guest at Saturday night’s banquet. He’ll talk about writing, read some poetry, and most likely strum a little bit on his guitar.

Program offerings include the second annual All Stories Connect panel discussion. This year’s theme is “A Conversation about Culture” with Shervon Cassim, Sheila Smith McKoy, Donna Miscolta, and Elaine Neil Orr. Sunday morning will once again feature the popular Brilliant at Breakfast panel discussion “Agents and Editors,” featuring Michelle Brower of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth; Robin Miura, editor of Carolina Wren Press; Emma Patterson of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc.; and Kathy Pories, Senior Editor at Algonquin Books.

Poetry classes include “Image and Narrative” with Guggenheim and NEA fellow Joseph Millar; “Writing Haiku” with Lenard D. Moore, recipient of the 2014 NC Award for Literature, the state’s highest civilian honor; and “The Furniture of the Poem: The Space of the Page and How We Fill It” with Chris Tonelli, poet and owner of Raleigh’s So & So Bookstore.

Fiction writers will choose from a full slate of class offerings including “Minute Particulars” with Raleigh’s Kim Church, whose debut novel Byrd won the Crook’s Corner Book Prize for best debut novel set in the South; “Ending Well: Short Story Endings and Their Lessons” with Clare Beams, author of the forthcoming short-story collection We Show What We Have Learned (Lookout Books, 2016). Poet, playwright, and arts educator Howard L. Craft will teach “Developing Authentic Dialog”; and Art Taylor, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel, will teach “Sharp, Succinct & Suspenseful: Crafting the Mystery Story.”

Other classes focus on some aspect of the publishing industry. Poet, NCWN trustee, and NCWN regional rep for Wake County, Alice Osborn, will teach “How to be a Rock Star at PR”; the Triangle Association of Freelancers will lead the panel discussion on “Freelance Writing 101”; intellectual property attorney Mitch Tuchman will talk to writers about “Copyright Infringement”; Ross White, poet and founder/publisher of Bull City Press, will lead “Grammar Gone Wild”; and Kim Church and Emma Patterson will chat about “How to Work with an Agent.”

Additional offerings will appeal to authors who write across genres: award-winning Young Adult and New Adult author Jen McConnel will ask “YA/NA: What’s the Big Deal?”; Zelda Lockhart, founder of LaVenson Press Studios, will guide attendees through “The Relationship Museum”; award-winning writer and folklorist Eleanora E. Tate will lead a class on children’s writing; and sci-fi writer Ian J. Malone will teach a class called “Beyond Vanity: How Indie Publishing Builds Professional Writers.”

2016 Fall Conference sponsors include March Graham, author of Ashes and Dust; Chatham-Lee Counties NCWN regional rep Al Manning; the North Carolina Museum of History; Alice Osborn: Editor/Book Coach/Author; The 2017 Piedmont Laureate Program; the University of North Carolina Press; and the North Carolina Arts Council.

For more information, and to register, visit www.ncwriters.org.
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Contact: Charles Fiore, Communications Director, North Carolina Writers' Network, Charles@ncwriters.org

Poet Maren O. Mitchell's poem "Black Cow", appears in Wild Goose Poetry Review's Online Journal for Summer 2016

Maren O. Mitchell’s poem, “Black Cow” currently appears online, in Wild Goose Poetry Review. Mitchell’s poems have been published in Chiron Review, “Waiting on Squirrels,” “Rod Spears, Gigolo,” and “Phillipa Daisy, Dancer”; Hotel Amerika, “T Is Totally Balanced,” and “X Is a Kiss on Paper,”; The World Is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins, “Breath and Bread” a found poem; and The Crafty Poet II: A Portable Workshop, “Shapeshifter” and “Intrinsic.” 

Maren O. Mitchell’s poems have appeared in Iodine Poetry Journal, The Lake (UK), Appalachian Heritage, The South Carolina Review, Hotel Amerika, Southern Humanities Review, Skive (AUS), The Classical Outlook, Town Creek Poetry, Appalachian Journal, Pirene’s Fountain, Wild Goose Poetry Review and elsewhere. Her work is included in Negative Capability Press Anthology of Georgia Poetry, The Southern Poetry Anthologies, V: Georgia & VII: North Carolina and Sunrise from Blue Thunder. Poems are forthcoming in Hotel Amerika and Chiron Review. Her nonfiction book is Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide (Line of Sight Press, 2012) www.lineofsightpress.com  and is available at the Curiosity Shop bookstore in Murphy, NC, and on Amazon.

Mitchell has taught poetry at Blue Ridge Community College, Flat Rock, NC, and catalogued at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. In 2012 she received 1st Place Award for Excellence in Poetry from the Georgia Poetry Society. For over twenty years, across five southeastern states, she has taught origami, the Japanese art of paper folding.

A native of North Carolina, in her childhood Mitchell lived in Bordeaux, France, and Kaiserslautern, Germany. After moving throughout the southeast U.S., she now lives with her husband in Young Harris, Georgia, on the edge of the national forest.

You can find the link to "Black Cow," here:  https://wildgoosepoetryreview.wordpress.com/summer-2016/maren-o-mitchell-black-cow/

Brasstown, NC's John Campbell Folk School readings Thursday, Oct. 20, 2016, to feature writers Mary Michelle Keller & Lucy Cole Gratton

Mary Michelle Keller

Lucy Cole Gratton

On Thursday, October 20, 2016 at 7:00 PM, the John Campbell Folk School and NC Writers Network-West are sponsoring The Literary Hour, an hour of poetry and prose reading held at Keith House on the JCFS campus, Brasstown, NC. This is being held on the third Thursday of the month unless otherwise notified. The reading is free of charge and open to the public. Poets and writers Mary Michelle Keller and Lucy Cole Gratton will be the featured readers, returning to the Folk School as one of the more entertaining pair of readers.

Mary Michelle Keller has lived in Town County 20 years. It is here that she began to write poetry followed by the natural progression into prose. She is a musician, artist and photographer. Keller says that all those loves give root to her poetry as inspiration. Her poem, As The Deer, published in the anthology, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, was inspired by an old hymn by the same name that she plays on the dulcimer.

Keller enjoys words; moving them around on paper until a poem, short story or essay emerges. She finds pleasure in reading to a few or many, be it her own words or those of others, and says reading at the Folk School is always a treat. Keller always enjoys reading her pieces to locals and students of the school.

Lucy Cole Gratton is a retired CPA who has lived in the Murphy area over 20 years. She received her BA in mathematics from Agnes Scott College, her MEd in secondary math from the University of Florida and her accounting hours from Florida Atlantic University.

Since her retirement she served as Executive Director for the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition, Inc for several years and continues to assist with the accounting and tax preparation for the Coalition as a volunteer. She is a member and serves as Treasurer of the Mountain Community Chorus Inc., which rehearses at Young Harris College, presenting a concert each spring and Christmas.

Gratton is a Cherokee County representative for NCWN and a member of NCWN-West. She coordinates the program at John Campbell Folk School for NCWN-West and serves as moderator. Her poems include various topics but predominantly center around her concern for the environments and her home in the woods of Lake Appalachia. Gratton’s writing has been published in various venues but has had limited publication since she writes predominantly for the love of writing, sharing it with family and friends.

Contact: Lucy Cole Gratton, Cherokee County Representative –NCWN-West

828-494-2914 
lgratton@hughes.net