2023 Blue Ridge Writers Conference keynote speaker is Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, author

We are very fortunate that the Blue Ridge Writers Conference is held in Blue Ridge, Georgia every spring. It is one of the best small conferences you will find anywhere. This year the keynote speaker will be Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle. She lives in western North Carolina and is a member of the NCWN-West. She is also president of the NC Writers' Network Board of Trustees. 

https://www.blueridgewritersconference.com/about-our-speakers.html 

Carol Crawford and the staff at the Blue Ridge Arts Association have gathered an elite faculty and will cover all facets of writing. If you have not attended before, mark your calendar now and go to the website to register. If you plan to spend the weekend there, better get those hotel reservations now as they fill up quickly. 

You will find Dana Wildsmith and Jessica Handler on the speakers' list. Many locals are familiar with Dana who teaches at the John C. Campbell Folk School yearly. Jessica has often been on the speakers' list for the Blue Ridge Conference. 

I look forward to attending this year since I missed the last couple of years. 

Carol Crawford who lives in Fannin County, Georgia was an active member of Netwest when I first moved to Hayesville, NC. In those days there were very few writing events in our area other than the monthly Thursday evening meetings at Tri-County Community College led by our NCWN-West members. Carol led our poetry group at that time. Thanks to Carol and others with the Blue Ridge Arts Association this is the twenty-sixth Blue Ridge Writers conference.

Not only do we have the opportunity to meet and learn from knowledgeable instructors, but it's also like a reunion for so many of us who have enjoyed it all these years. The speakers are available to those who want to speak to them or ask questions. I hope to see you there.

Registration now open: Carol Crawford writing class March 26, Moss Memorial Library

Where: Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

Sponsored by NC Writers Network West 

Instructor: Carol Crawford

Fee: $40.00 

Time: 1:30 - 4:30 Thursday - March 26

He Said, She Said:  Tackling Dialogue in Prose

This interactive workshop will help you bring your characters to life with dialogue that is authentic, clear, and compelling. Capture the flavor of personality, place, and culture through speech that sounds real. In-class exercises will cover word choice, tone, action beats, what to leave out, and format.

Carol Childers Crawford is the owner of Carol Crawford Editing and author of The Habit of Mercy, Poems about Daughters and Mothers.
Carol has led workshops and taught creative writing for the John C. Campbell Folk School, the Dahlonega Literary Festival, The Red Clay Writers’ Conference, The Writers’ Circle, the North Carolina Writers’ Network, and the Carrollton Writers’ Club. She has been a volunteer with the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference since it began more than twenty years ago.

She has been published in the Southern Humanities Review, the Chattahoochee Review, and the Journal of Kentucky Studies among others. Originally from Texas, she holds a journalism and English degree from Baylor University.

Through teaching and editing, Carol finds joy in helping people tell their stories.

She spends her free time doing needlepoint and badgering county commissioners about library funding. 

Contact Glenda Beall - glendabeall@msn.com for registration information

Want to be a better writer?

March 26 - Carol Crawford - instructor

He Said, She Said:  Tackling Dialogue in Prose

This interactive workshop will help you bring your characters to life with dialogue that is authentic, clear, and compelling.  Capture the flavor of personality, place, and culture through speech that sounds real.  In-class exercises will cover word choice, tone, action beats, what to leave out, and format.
Fee: $40

April 23 - Catherine Carter

Description:

Bracket and Hinge: Strengthening Poems’ Sonic Level. In this 2-hour lecture/workshop, Catherine Carter will use contemporary poems to discuss a few of the ways in which a poem can be built around the sounds of single words, model one possible process for revising a poem in this way, and encourage participants to do this with their own works. Participants should bring hard copy of one or two of their own short poems to work on.
Fee: $40

June 25 - Patricia Zick

Patricia Zick's workshop, "The Road to Publishing" will explore the different choices for publishing a book. Then she will delve into the step-by-step process for self-publishing a work of nonfiction or fiction using Amazon’s publishing platform. Ms. Zick, the author of twenty-five published books in a variety of genres, will demonstrate how to prepare a manuscript, provide definitions for publishing jargon, and walk through the process for uploading a book for both Kindle and paperback publication to the online retail site. 

Fee: $40

Registration must be made ten days before class date.
Contact glendabeall@msn.com
Send check, $40.00, made to NCWN West 
Mail to: PO Box 843, Hayesville, NC 28904

CRITIQUE YOUR MANUSCRIPT, YOUR POEMS, YOUR SHORT PROSE

BLUE RIDGE WRITERS' CONFERENCE - APRIL 3 AND 4

Just a reminder for those of you who might want to have work critiqued at the Blue Ridge Writers' Conference in Blue Ridge, Georgia, April 3 and 4, 2020.  The deadline to submit work for critique is February 28.  Here's the link:

https://www.blueridgewritersconference.com/critique-options.html 

We have a great slate of speakers this year and we hope you will join us!

https://www.blueridgewritersconference.com/about-our-speakers.html  

Carol

--

Website:  carolcrawfordediting.com

Email:  carol@carolcrawfordediting.com

Phone:  706-633-6497

Writing Classes in Clay and Cherokee County NC - Register now

Tri-County Community College
Register with Lisa Long, Director of Community Outreach, by calling 828-835-4241 or email her: LLong@tricountycc.edu

Creative Writing with Glenda Beall

Students in a TCCC class

A class at John C. Campbell Folk School before writing classes were held
at Orchard House

John C. Campbell Folk School Classes at Orchard House in Brasstown, NC

www.folkschool.org 

Mining the Mother Lode - Making the Most of Your Material

Date: Sunday, Mar 1 - Friday, Mar 6, 2020 Subject: Writing Instructor: Darnell Arnoult Share: One of the great lessons we learn as writers is that we almost always write about the same things over and over. Characters, places, and plots may appear different, but we are driven by the same passions, questions, and obsessions - the same vein of ore. Use exercises and assignments to dig deep into personal experiences, curiosities, and knowledge to strengthen your writing. This class is beneficial to beginning and experienced writers of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction.  To register for this class, please call 1-800-365-5724.

Vicki Lane 

A Practical Guide to Writing Popular Fiction

Sunday, June 7 - Saturday, Jun 13, 2020

Moss Memorial Library - Hayesville, NC  

March - August, 2020 - once each month on
4th Thursday afternoons - 1:30 - 4:30
Contact: Glenda Beall - glendabeall@msn.com

March 26 - Carol Crawford - instructor

He Said, She Said:  Tackling Dialogue in Prose

This interactive workshop will help you bring your characters to life with dialogue that is authentic, clear, and compelling.  Capture the flavor of personality, place, and culture through speech that sounds real.  In-class exercises will cover word choice, tone, action beats, what to leave out, and format.

April 23 - Catherine Carter

Description:

Bracket and Hinge: Strengthening Poems’ Sonic Level. In this 2-hour lecture/workshop, Catherine Carter will use contemporary poems to discuss a few of the ways in which a poem can be built around the sounds of single words, model one possible process for revising a poem in this way, and encourage participants to do this with their own works. Participants should bring hard copy of one or two of their own short poems to work on.

June 25 - Patricia Zick

Patricia Zick's workshop, "The Road to Publishing" will explore the different choices for publishing a book. Then she will delve into the step-by-step process for self-publishing a work of nonfiction or fiction using Amazon’s publishing platform. Ms. Zick, the author of twenty-five published books in a variety of genres, will demonstrate how to prepare a manuscript, provide definitions for publishing jargon, and walk through the process for uploading a book for both Kindle and paperback publication to the online retail site. 

Writing Classes and Writers You Should Know

If you have never spent a week or even a weekend at the John C. Campbell Folk School, then you want to take a look at the writing classes planned for the coming months.

My students in a Folk School class I taught a few years ago.

Here are some of the instructors that I know. Wish I could go and take classes with each of them myself.

If you write novels or fiction of any kind, check out Vicki Lane. Such a nice lady and a writer with so many followers and fans she has to keep them entertained with her blog and her photographs between books in the series she writes. June 7 – June 13, A Practical Guide to Writing Popular Fiction.

Carol Crawford, my dear friend, will teach again at JCCFS. Besides being the kindest and nicest person I know, she always teaches me something that helps me to write a little better. She is a poet, a wonderful essayist and an editor. If you haven’t had a class with Carol, register now for her Creative Writing class January 12 – 28. 

Some of you might not know, but Carol was our facilitator for the Netwest Poetry group when I first moved here to the mountains years ago. When I was too scared to read a poem out loud, she helped me find my courage.

Valerie Nieman is teaching again at JCCFS. Her books are filled with interesting characters and you will find her interesting and so knowledgeable about everything regarding writing and publishing. How fortunate we are in our area to have Valerie teach here each year. The Breath of Life: Discovering and Depicting Characters

Karen Paul Holmes, a poet whose work I know so well and enjoy so much will teach a weekend class, Love Songs and Poetry. I think I’ll sign up now to be sure I get in.

Darnell Arnoult, who taught classes for NCWN-West many times over the years, will teach at JCCFS in March. Mining the Mother Lode, Making the Most of Your Material. Sounds like a class I would like to take.

View from behind the Orchard House, the writing studio

Remember: If you are a local resident, you can often take classes for half the fee. Call and sign up for the waiting list or go online to www.folkschool.org

Writers Kenneth Chamlee, Carol Crawford, and Karen Paul Holmes to be featured at The Literary Hour, Thursday, 8/22/2019, at 7:00 PM, at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC

On Thursday, August 22, 2019, at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School and NC Writers' Network-West will sponsor The Literary Hour. At this event, NCWN-West members will read at the Keith House on the JCCFS campus, in Brasstown, NC. This event is now held in the community room. The Literary Hour is held on the third Thursday of the month unless otherwise indicated. This reading is free of charge and open to the public. This month's featured readers will be Kenneth Chamlee, Carol Crawford, and Karen Paul Holmes.

Kenneth Chamlee is Professor of English Emeritus at Brevard College in North Carolina.  His poems have appeared in The North Carolina Literary Review, Cold Mountain Review, Ekphrasis, The Greensboro Review and many others.  He won the GSU Review (Georgia State University) National Writing Award in Poetry, ByLine Magazine's National Poetry Chapbook Competition (Absolute Faith, 1999), and the Longleaf Press Poetry Chapbook Competition (Logic of the Lost, 2001).  In 2004 he won the Word Journal Poetry Prize and in 2009 and 2016 he was a finalist in the Iowa Review Poetry Contest. 

Chamlee has received three Pushcart Prize nominations. His poems have appeared in five editions of Kakalak: An Anthology of Carolina Poets and in 2017 he was a finalist for the James Applewhite Poetry Prize.

Carol Crawford has published short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in the Southern Humanities Review, Appalachian Heritage, the Concho River Review, the Chattahoochee Review, the Journal of Kentucky Studies, and others. Her latest essay, ”Deliveries,” was in the April 2018 issue of Adelaide online magazine. She is owner of Carol Crawford Editing and author of The Habit of Mercy, Poems about Daughters and Mothers. 

Crawford has taught workshops for the Dahlonega Literary Festival, the John C. Campbell Folk School, the Blue Ridge Mountains Arts Association, the Red Clay Writers’ Conference, the Carrollton Writers’ Club, and the Writers’ Circle. She has been program coordinator for the annual Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference since its inception more than twenty years ago.

Karen Paul Holmes has two full-length poetry collections, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin Books, 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press, 2014). In 2012, Karen received an Elizabeth George Foundation emerging writer grant for poetry. She was chosen as a Best Emerging Poet in 2016 by Stay Thirsty Media. Publications include Prairie Schooner, Valparaiso Review, Tar River Poetry, Poet Lore and other journals and anthologies. Holmes hosts a critique group in Atlanta and Writers’ Night Out in Blairsville, which she founded. She also teaches writing classes at the Folk School, Writer’s Circle, and other venues.

A member of the North Carolina Writers' Network, the Atlanta Writers Club, and the Georgia Poetry Society, Holmes has studied with poets: Thomas Lux, Denise Duhamel, Dorianne Laux, Joseph Millar, William Wright, Carol Ann Duffy, and Nancy Simpson (whom she counts as her first poetry mentor).

For more information about this event, please contact Mary Ricketson at: maryricketson311@hotmail.com.