Doe Branch Ink lists classes for spring/summer

We received this email from Memsy Price regarding Doe Branch Ink.

I'm working with Jim Roberts and Deborah Jakubs of Doe Branch Ink. We've just released our schedule of Spring/Summer Workshops for writers of fiction, nonfiction, and songs. We'll have week-long retreats in Marshall County with Philip Gerard, Cat Warren, Kate Campbell, and Marjorie Hudson. Cost varies depending on choice of accommodation and includes delicious meals and spectacular views. Our website is http://www.doebranchink.org. Many thanks!

Regards,
Memsy Price | memsy.price@gmail.com

This looks  like a great place to spend time learning from good writers. Check out the website.

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

Poet Maren O. Mitchell has two letter poems published in The Lake, an online journal in the UK

Poet Maren O. Mitchell, a member of NCWN-West, has two letter poems published in this months online journal from the UK, The Lake.

Here is the Link:  http://www.thelakepoetry.co.uk/poetry/maren-o-mitchell/

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.

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

Open Mic in Sylva! January 27th

The Jackson County Netwest is holding its Open Mic night at City Lights Bookstore on Spring Street in Sylva this coming Friday night (January 27th) at 7:00 pm.  There will be beverages and desserts.  Readers generally read for about ten minutes, unless the group gets too large, in which case all readers get five minutes.  Signup for reading slots begins at 6:45.  It's a friendly and supportive group with all levels of experience, and we'd love to see you--come on out!

New format for updating your bio information for the NCWN-West blog

Members:

I would appreciate your help in updating your bio information for the NCWN-West blog. I would prefer members create a full bio in a word document. The member should then save the document as a file called  Bio for (add name).

Whenever there is a change to the member's bio, that person should update the bio information in the word document, and send it to me with a request that the bio be updated. This will enable the admin to cut and paste the new document over the old bio.

I have a couple of members that are already using this format, and it works very well. However, if the member cannot create their bio in this manner, than admin will surely help them.

Thank you for your assistance!

Joan Ellen Gage,
Admin for the NCWN-West Blog

Amazon has a good deal for you on two of Tom Davis' books.

The R-complex and  Helloooo Vietnam 364 Days and a Wakeup, books by Tom Davis, NCWN-West member, are showcased in a recent Amazon E-Blast.

The books are FREE if you participate in the Kindle Unlimited and/or the Kindle Owners' Lending Library:

NOTE Amazon Prime members who own a Kindle can choose one book from each month with no due dates.

Helloooo Vietnam: 364Days and a Wake-up   Kindle Edition

This eBook is the second chapter of the Tom Davis' memoir: The Most Fun I Ever Had with My Clothes On: A March from Private to Colonel. In his memoir the author relates his experiences during the thirty-one years spent in the US Army, rising through the ranks from private to full colonel. Twenty of those years he served with US Army Special Forces (Green Berets). This book chronicles his time in three combat zones: Vietnam, Bosnia, and Iraq/Turkey. Included are his experiences commanding Special Forces Operational A Detachments which specialized in Underwater Operations, High Altitude Low Opening Parachuting, Mountaineering, and Small Atomic Demolitions Munitions as well as two Special Forces Battalions and a Joint Special Operations Task Force. Each chapter covers his duties and responsibilities at the Army Installation where he served. Sometimes funny. Sometimes sad. Always interesting.

The R-Complex   

What could happen when members of an Atlanta car theft ring, in the process of stealing her car, kill the pregnant wife of an ex Special Forces demolition expert?

John Crown believed that his Special Forces training and missions existed now only as distant memories. But when his pregnant wife is killed in an “accident” at the hands of cold-blooded, professional car thieves and racketeers, something else dies too: John’s new life as a husband, soon-to-be father, and successful software engineer in Atlanta, Georgia. To track down his wife’s unknown murderers, John sets a series of ingenious–and deadly–traps for unwitting, criminal prey. John fast becomes the underworld’s worst nightmare: a Special Forces-trained vigilante who obeys no law except the one that will bring him peace–the law of revenge. What he doesn’t know is that some of his prey welcomes the challenge, anxious and willing to play his deadly game–to win.
The R-complex is a fast-paced action adventure novel packed with organized crime, drug cartels, terrorist groups, revenge killings, brutal murders, improvised demolitions, a man who proves to be the ultimate killing machine, a female assassin, and a Special Forces A Team infiltrating Colombia, South America, to bring two villains to justice.

Two Excellent Poets for A Day for Writers

A Day for Writers, May 6, 2017

Kathryn Stripling Byer

We are delighted that the first woman Poet Laureate of North Carolina, Kathryn Stripling Byer, widely published and highly praised member of NCWN-West, will teach a two-hour workshop at A Day for Writers, Saturday, May 6, 2017. 

 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. She 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.

Catherine Carter

Catherine Carter, poet and teacher at Western Carolina University, will be a presenter at the conference giving us two of the finest poets in the region.  

“Catherine Carter’s unique poems are a joy to read and hear aloud, and they yield more and more subtle satisfactions the longer you live with them,” said Elizabeth Addison, head of the WCU English department. “It’s been an honor to share her department.”

A resident of Cullowhee, Carter coordinates the English education program at WCU. Her work has appeared in Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, Tar River, Main Street Rag and Cider Press Review, among others.

She had work in the Best American Poetry 2009 anthology, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her first book, “The Memory of Gills,” won the 2007 Roanoke-Chowan Award.

“The Swamp Monster at Home is a most valuable collection of poems. Catherine Carter treats the sometimes scary materials she addresses with poise and wit, humor and frankness. Her self-possession is not armor plate; she is as vulnerable as you and I, as the deer that come to drink at the darkest river. She speaks with the kind of grace that is gained only after facing daunting difficulties with resolute courage. I admire everything about this book. Everything.”—Fred Chappell

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.