Our Membership - Where are our members?

Tonight I spent much of my time correlating names of NCWN West members with their proper email groups. When new writers join us, in order to keep up with them, I make sure their names are in my contact list and in the right place.

When I want to send an email to local members in Cherokee County, I need all the members in that county to be listed in my contact list for Cherokee County. I do the same for Clay and all the other counties that make up our region. 

Barb Haynes, Mike Keller, Linda Smith and Estelle Rice at Joe's Coffee house in Hayesville, NC where we met for Coffee with the Poets and Writers.

 

We have members that live in Georgia. I have a GA members list of contacts. That is part of my job as NCWN-West program Coordinator. No one says I must do this. I do it in order to organize members in a way I can easily contact them by email.

Because our region covers such a wide area, geographically, events in Clay County might not be of interest in Henderson County north of Clay. With the terrain we have in the mountains, some writers will not want to travel one hundred miles to attend a conference or another literary event if they have to drive on winding roads and over steep mountains.

That is why our program, NCWN-West, was created back in the early 90s. Travel is just not easy here even with good highways. Weather can play havoc on a trip if it is icy on top of Franklin Mountain. Folks in Highlands or Brevard will not likely head down to Murphy when it is snowing and the roads might be slick.

Thankfully, we now have the Internet and e-mail to connect us. It is not the same as attending an event and networking with other writers, but it helps fill the void of isolation that writers can feel when they don’t have someone to talk to or someone who will listen to them read their work.

We don’t have enough members in Swain County or up in Bryson City to create a community at this time, but I hope we can do so soon. There are writers in that area who travel down to Sylva, NC to attend meetings at City Lights Books. We would like to have them become a part of NCWN-West so we could reach out to them and see how we might be of service to them. Our mission is to support writers in the mountain area, but if we don’t know the writers and if they don’t reach out to us, we cannot be of use to them.

Glenda Beall, Wayne Drumheller, Jayne Jaudon Ferrer, Lana Hendershott, Nancy Simpson, Nancy Purcell, and JC Walkup at the Book Festival in Hendersonville a few years ago.

I hope before too long I will have a contact list for Swain County and for Graham County members. If anyone reading this post lives in those areas, please email me or call me. Our community of writers here in the mountains is growing and up to 94 members at this time. With that many writers I’m sure all kinds of genres are represented and all kinds of creative minds are fulfilling their goals or at least working toward fulfilling them. Perhaps we can point you in the right direction. It is easy to join us. Just visit www.ncwriters.org and join online. When you become a member of NCWN, you are automatically a member of NCWN-West and will not pay any extra dues. You get two for one and that doesn’t happen often.  See our contact info on the sidebar of this page.

NCWN-West members are known for their generosity toward each other. Instead of competition, we embrace community and helping other writers in whatever way we can.

Meeting in Regional Room at City Lights Bookstore, Sylva, NC