Poet Scott Owens to Teach Workshop at Moss Memorial Library June 16

We are fortunate to have Scott Owens teach a workshop for us at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC, Friday, June 16, 2:00-4:45 PM.

Scott Owens writes poetry as if he were a painter. Painters see more than other people see. They look beyond the obvious. Scott sees and invites the reader to visualize images, actions, beliefs, purposes, motives, and results of what he has gleaned from his life as a child, a husband, a father, a teacher, a human being who took notice.

Workshop Title: Inspiration Surrounds Us: How to Have Enough to Write About for at Least 4 Lifetimes.

Fee: $45.00 A portion of the fee goes to NCWN-West.

Send a check before June 10, made to Glenda Beall, and mail to 581 Chatuge Lane, Hayesville, NC 28904

Scott Owens

Scott is the author of 19 collections of poetry, and more than 1200 published poems. He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the NC Writers' Network, the NC Poetry Society, the Poetry Society of SC, and many others.

His poems have been featured on "The Writers' Almanac" 7 times, "Poetry in Plain Sight" 4 times, and "Your Daily Poem" 13 times.

He is Professor of Poetry at Lenoir Rhyne University and has taught creative writing for more than 20 years, including in excess of 40 community or conference workshops.

His books cover a wide range of topics including a love of nature, surviving an abusive childhood, growing up on a farm, writing, religion, dreams and nightmares, parenting, politics, philosophy, existentialism, and of course, love.

He has collaborated with poet, Pris Campbell, on two novels in poetry; with artist, Missy Cleveland, on an illustrated collection of poems for children; and with photographer, Clayton Joe Young, on two collections featuring images of the North Carolina Piedmont. 

In his spare time, Scott owns and operates a successful coffee shop in downtown Hickory. He serves as President of the Hickory Downtown Development Association. He has hosted Poetry Hickory at his coffee shop for 17 years. Several of our NCWN-West poets have read there.

Scott has always loved the NC mountains. In his younger days he was an avid hiker, who spent one summer hiking the mountains to more than 100 waterfalls. He is also an avid birdwatcher, and on a recent weeklong visit to the Smokies, saw 23 bald eagles.

Born and raised on farms and in mill villages in and around Greenwood, SC, he now lives on an acre near downtown Hickory where he constantly weeds his garden, prunes his trees, and tends his flock of 8 egg-producing chickens.

He says you can take the boy off the farm, but you can never take the farm out of the boy.