Cherokee County Poetry and Essay Contest

Dalton Mallonee, Cliff Owl, and Amanda Gaddis - Essay contest winners.
Kelly Noel Waldorf and Hannah Larson. Poetry contest winners.

Serving as judge of essays for the Cherokee County Poetry and Essay Contest held each year for high school students in Cherokee County, North Carolina was and is always an honor. I read and re-read the work of these students and found it difficult to choose only three winners.

Cliff Owl III, in the white shirt in the photo, was my choice for first place. His personal essay, Walking the Line of the Reservation, expresses deep insight into his feelings of guilt, stygma, and his reconciliation of these feelings as he graduates from Murphy High School. With a small enrollment of people from his father's Cherokee Indian heritage Cliff often felt he should be at Cherokee High School on the Qualla Boundary, home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee where his relatives live and his family once lived. I was not surprised when Cliff said he was going to college at Stamford University.His writing showed a surprising maturity for such a young man.

Second and third place essay winners responded to an assignment in class and both wrote entirely different views on the subject of a Learning Experience.

First place Poetry winner was Hannah Larsen. This was her second time to win this contest in her four years of high school

Judging the Poetry contest was Jayne Jaudon Ferrer, our Netwest Rep in South Carolina.

Our congratulations to all the winners. This contest is sponsored each year by the local community, and the Cherokee Scout Newspaper.

Paul Donovan, a long time supporter of writers in his community, organizes the contest which awards monetary prizes. Netwest donates an award each year.

Titles of winning essays are:
First Place :Walking the Line of the Reservation
Second Place :A Powerful Learning Experience
Third Place :A Learning Experience

The Raindrop Waltz in Hendersonville Sept. 17

‘The Raindrop Waltz’ at BRCC

The Arts and Humanities Series at Blue Ridge Community College will present “the Raindrop Waltz” by award-winning playwright Gary Carden at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 17. This free event will be in the Patton Auditorium.
“The Raindrop Waltz” is poignant and sweet, painful and funny. It captures a handsome picture of one Western North Carolina family through several generations based on Carden’s Jackson County childhood.
Agnes is a fiercely independent Appalachian grandmother who lives alone in the rustic cabin she has inhabited for many years. Because she is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and soon will be unable to care for herself, her family is faced with the difficult decision of moving her from her beloved mountain home to a nursing home. With great love and humor, Jody Lee, her grandson whom she raised, tells the story of his life and hers through memories of family tales, songs, loves and relationships.
This performance will be staged by Burnsville Little Theater that has a history of providing dramatic presentations for more than 80 years. Director Elizabeth Westfall will bring a performance that has been staged many times in Western North Carolina and beyond. Cast includes Elizabeth Westfall, Bob Wilson, Milton Higgins, Bill Wheeler, Bruce Chuvala, Colette Blankenship and Jennifer Issacs. Carden will also be present and available to answer questions after the performance.
A Sylva native, Carden was raised by his grandparents in a “house filled with the past.” From birth, he was steeped in untainted mountain culture, lore and language. He has investigated and evoked his native region in drama, rendering authentic presentations of the characters and of mountain history and folklore. In the many plays he has written, Carden portrays the mountain people from earlier eras with great devotion and compassion but also with uncompromising honesty.
Carden is also known as a folklorist and storyteller. He graduated from Western Carolina University and for the past 15 years has taught literature and drama, worked for the Cherokee Indians and has been a storyteller.
Recently, Carden was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters by his alma mater, WCU. Widely acclaimed for his written works and spoken performances that bring to life the history, myths and legends of Western North Carolina, Carden is the author of “Mason Jars in the Flood and Other Stories,” the 2001 Appalachian Writers Association Book of the Year.
This program is sponsored by the Community Enrichment Division in the Continuing Education Department. For more information, contact Martha Howell at 694-1743 or at http://www.blogger.com/.

Betty Cloer Wallace's Tuckaseegee Chronicles

After a failed uprising against England in 1745, Scots Highlander exiles
emigrate to America where they operate a trading post and packhorse enterprise among Cherokee Indians. As Mairy MacNeill comes of age, she learns that the Cherokee are not unlike Scottish clans both culturally and spiritually, that war between the Cherokee and English is inevitable, that friendship and loyalty can cross cultural boundaries, and that loving a man, either trader's son Joe Buck Cheatham or Cherokee warrior Otter, can be elusive.
Mairy's Cherokee friends Redwing and Standing Wolf find each other, but
realize that unscrupulous traders and settlers coming into their homeland bring conflict that will forever change their lives and the future of the Cherokee Nation.
Set in the heart of America's first frontier during the early years of the
French and Indian War, TUCKASEEGEE is carefully researched for historical and cultural accuracy.



Betty Cloer Wallace is Macon County Representative for NCWN West.



CHRONICLES - Amazon book page and excerpt (free download of first three chapters) may be accessed at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0011G9Y5E ....... Author's Amazon profile and blog may be accessed at http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A3PTVWHUZKB8R3 ....... Author's e-mail: bettycloerwallace@runbox.com