NCWN announced the new Executive Director

On Saturday at the NCWN Fall Writing and Publishing Conference in Winston-Salem, Ed Southern was introduced as the new Executive Director for NCWN and he will take office on January 1, 2008. Ed is highly qualified to lead the writers’ network. He presently works with John F. Blair, publisher, as vice president of sales and marketing. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the NCWN since July 2005.

Some of you may know that I “announced” his position prematurely. My mistake. But, even though I haven’t talked with Ed, I feel that he is an excellent choice. We will hear more from him after he takes office. He graduated from Wake Forest University with a Bachelor of Arts, politics, (cum laude) in 1994.

In conversations with Cynthia Barnett, present Executive Director, I learned the network had no particular marketing or public relations personnel. I feel that Ed Southern with his marketing background will increase the visibility of the network and then everyone, not only writers, will know what NCWN can do for them, and he will see that NCWN reaches out to writers and those who need writers anywhere in the state. I look forward to meeting him and making him aware of our NCWN West writers here in the mountains.