The Literary Hour to be held on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, at John C. Campbell Folk School, in Brasstown, NC, features poets Gene Hirsch and Maren O. Mitchell

On Wednesday evening, May 18, 2016 at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School and N.C. Writers' Network-West are sponsoring The Literary Hour, an hour of poetry and prose reading. The reading is free of charge and open to the public. Normally scheduled for the third Thursday of the month, this month the event will be on Wednesday. Poets Dr. Eugene Hirsch and Maren Mitchell will be the featured readers, both of whom are accomplished poets. This should be an excellent program and greatly anticipated by writers and poets in our area.

Gene Hirsch is a physician who, for many years, has taught human values in patient care, and in dying people, to medical students and doctors. His major interests are people in health and sickness, and poetry. Hirsch initiated the writing program at John C. Campbell Folk School in1992 and, with Nancy Simpson, co-founded NC Writers’ Network West, and he has been active in both. Hirsch conducts workshops for interested poets twice a year, as well as Glenda Beall’s Writers Circle.

Gene’s poetry has appeared in medical and non-medical journals such as: Pharos (Medical Honor Society), Journal of the American Medical Assn., Hiram Poetry Review, Human Quest, and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Anthologies include: Atahita Journal, Blood & Bone (poems by physicians), Behavioral Medicine, Crossing Limits (Afro-American and Jewish Poets), Tyranny of the Normal, and Echoes across the Blue Ridge. He has edited five volumes of Freeing Jonah (poetry from J.C. Campbell Folk School and the surrounding community) and two books. Two more books will appear this spring.

Maren O. 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.

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

Mitchell’s poems have appeared in Iodine Poetry Journal, The Lake (UK), Appalachian Heritage, The South Carolina Review, Hotel Amerika, Southern Humanities Review, Town Creek Poetry, Pirene’s Fountain, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Skive (AU), The Journal of Kentucky Studies, Appalachian Journal, The Arts Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthologies, V: Georgia & VII: North Carolina, Sunrise from Blue Thunder, and elsewhere. Work is forthcoming in Hotel Amerika, The World Is Charged: Poetic Engagements with Gerard Manley Hopkins, The Crafty Poet II, Chiron Review, Poetry East, and Tar River Poetry.

Her nonfiction book is Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide (Line of Sight Press, 2012) www.lineofsightpress.com, available on Amazon.