Famous Hometown Poet Brenda K. Ledford Will Speak at Coffee with the Poets and Writers

Coffee with the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature award-winning poet Brenda K. Ledford on Wednesday, September 14, at 10:30 A.M. at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, N.C.

The event is free and open to the public.  

An open mic will follow the presentation. Bring a poem or short prose piece of about three minutes to participate. CWPW is sponsored by North Carolina Writers' Network West (NCWN-West) which also includes writers in Towns, Union, Fannin, and Rabun Counties in Georgia.

Brenda K. Ledford is a seventh-generational native of Clay County, NC. She was an honor graduate of Hayesville High School and earned a Master of Arts in Education from Western Carolina University. She's done post-graduate work in Journalism at the University of Tennessee and holds a degree of highest honor in Creative Writing from Stratford Career Institute.

Ledford's work has appeared in many publications including Our State, Asheville Poetry Review, Appalachian Heritage, 50 Old Mountain Press anthologies, and many other journals.  She's received the Paul Green Multimedia Award thirteen times for her blogs, books, and collecting oral history on Southern Appalachia. 

Her children's book The Singing Convention received the "Children's Book Award" in 2021 from the North Carolina Society of Historians. Her poetry book, Leatherwood Falls, is upcoming with Kelsay Books.

Besides writing, her hobbies include storytelling, playing the keyboard and harmonica, singing Gospel music, and reading.  She also enjoys photography and has won awards for her landscape and nature photos.

Her award-winning blog can be reached at https://blueridgepoet.blogspot.com/

Coffee With the Poets and Writers will meet every second Wednesday from June until December 2022.

Please do not park in the Book Store parking lot. For information contact Joan Howard joanhoward121@gmail.com.

Written by Joan Howard

Update on Writing Events and what to expect in the future

Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC is still closed and will be through May 2. 
Coffee with the Poets and Writers will not meet in May.

The Literary Hour usually held at the John C. Campbell Folk School will not meet in May.
Tri-County Community College is closed and the NCWN-West poetry and prose groups will not meet until the college is opened again.

No events are planned for NCWN-West until we all feel safe gathering in groups again. At this time, I can't imagine when that will be.

We might hold some Zoom events for writers including Writers' Night Out in May, but at this time we have no definite plans.

We would like to hear from you. Would you like to meet on Zoom or on Skype?

If enough of our members want to meet online, we will look at that possibility.
Leave a comment on this blog or email me your opinion.
gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com

If you participated in the Cabin Fever conference held by NCWN last Saturday, please let us know your thoughts about it. I signed on for four workshops and I did enjoy the entire day. Some of the groups had as many as 63 attending. Some of them muted their video and we could not see their faces. But that was fine. Some also muted their audio and they did not speak during the class time.

The instructors were excellent, especially Lynn York, editor for Blair Publishing and Robin, her co-instructor was exemplary in her presentation. I think this was the most detailed presentation I have seen or heard on what happens as your manuscript goes through the process of being published. Some of my thoughts on traditional publishers and marketing changed after hearing them speak.

I am teaching a free writing course for the next four weeks online using Zoom. If this experiment goes well, I will consider opening Writers Circle Around the Table and teaching online for pay in the coming months. 

We can make these months at home productive if we use our time to reflect on what we do, what we like to do and how we can better achieve our writing goals.

We can use this time to submit to contests and keep our work out, don't hoard your writing on your computer, submit it and give it a chance to mingle while you stay home. 

Rarey and Grove are featured at Coffee with the Poets and Writers March 20

On Wednesday, March 20, at 10:30 AM, Coffee with the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature storyteller Knute Rarey and writer Bob Grove. 

The event will be held at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC, and is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the presentation. CWPW is sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network West (NCWN-W).  

        Kanute Rarey is a local storyteller. He told his first "official" story in 2015 atJohn C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina, and later at the Swapping Ground at the International Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Since then he has also told stories at the Georgia Mountain Storytelling Festival, the Big Fibbers Festival, the Texas Storytelling Festival, the Moth Story Slam in Asheville, and the Stone Soup Festival.

       Born on a family farm in Ohio, he began visiting the North Georgia mountains regularly about forty years ago and fell in love with the people, their stories, the wild rivers, beautiful lakes, and mountains. He moved to Hayesville in 1990 and lived here for ten years. Work then took him away. Four years ago he retired back to Hayesville full-time.

       Rarey is a traveler, teacher, grandfather, and lifelong learner. Stories are from his personal life, from growing up on a farm in the Western Carolina mountains, from listening to family tales at breakfast gatherings and holiday meals, from the "characters" that make up his family, and from living with children and grandchildren. Some of his stories are established fables that hold life lessons that have been told over and over for many years. Other stories are works of his imagination.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Bob Grove lives with his wife Judy and their adorable Sheltie in a 55-acre woodland atop a mountain of North Carolina.  His diversified college curriculum led him to teach high school courses in science, psychology, English, and creative writing. Grove served as an ABC public affairs host, interviewing many newsworthy notables. He has been a featured speaker at 14 national conventions and a U.S. Congressional committee. 

His interests have led him to treasure hunting in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador, exploring in Alaska, roaming through old, abandoned houses, and sightseeing the beautiful Grand Canyon of the Pacific on the island of Kauai.   

Now retired and a prose critique facilitator for the North Carolina Writers Network-West and the Ridgeline Literary Alliance, he has published 19 books and hundreds of articles in 23 magazines. 

With more time to write, Grove varies his topical genres from humor to drama, and even dabbles in occasional poetry. He is a popular performance reader, evidenced by his well-attended annual reading, in costume and British dialect, of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown. 

    For more information about this event, please contact Glenda Beall at: glendabeall@msn.com.

Request for NCWN-West members to read at Coffee with the Poets and Writers meetings, for 2019, Hayesville, NC

Glenda Beall is setting up the schedule for featured members of NCWN-West to read at Coffee with the Poets and Writers for 2019. The event will begin in March and go through November with featured readers. Some months we will have two readers and some months we will have one. The meetings are at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC on the third Wednesday of the month at 10:30 AM.

Joan Howard is the facilitator and Carroll Taylor will doing publicity. There will be an article placed in the local newspapers.  If you are not from Clay, Cherokee, Towns, and Union, publicity will try to get an article in your local newspaper if you get them the contact information. If you have a book to promote, that is great. Bring copies to sell and sign. The event usually has visitors from the community who are not already members, some who just want to hear the reading.

CWPW has Brenda Kay Ledford reading for April Joan Howard for June, and tentatively, Charlie Pearson for March. Some other months are open; please check with Glenda Beall at glendabeall@msn.com for the current schedule. If two readers want to read on the same day, let Beall know. The event has a good attendance and everyone enjoys the Open Mic.


 

It's a new year, have you updated your bio, recently?

Hello fellow members!

I sent an email today asking for you to update your member bio, if you have not recently done so. If you need ideas, please peruse our member's page at:
https://netwestmembers.blogspot.com/ for examples of other member's bios.

I would prefer that you have a good bio for your member page, and a shorter one to use for newspaper articles. The shorter bio should be 50 to 100 words.

NCWN-West does have events that feature writers, and in this corner of the state, and we do send articles and photos to publications to garner interest at these events. These events are Coffee with the Poets and Writers (Hayesville, NC), and The Literary Hour Readings (Brasstown, NC). Both events will resume in March 2019, and continue through November 2019.

You should also have a good quality photo to go along with your member bio. If you do not have one, ask a friend to take a photo of you. It will be easiest if you have a photo taken with a digital camera, as these photos can be sent through email and uploaded to your member page.

Thanks, and I hope to see your emails!

Joan Ellen Gage,
Admin,
NCWN-West Blog

Coffee with the Poets and Writers will feature poet Richard M. Cary, and Author and poet Carroll S. Taylor, on Wednesday, October 17, 2018, at 10:30 AM at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

On Wednesday, October 17, 2018, 10:30 AM, Coffee with the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature poet Richard M. Cary, and author and poet Carroll S. Taylor. This event will be held at the Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson Street,  in Hayesville, NC, and is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the presentation. CWPW is sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network West (NCWN-W).

Richard Montford Cary has a MFA with a BFA in Theater Arts from Carnegie Mellon University, and spent six years in regional theaters (Antioch Area Theater Yellow Springs OH, Hartford Stage Company CT, Arena Stage Washington DC, and StageWest Springfield MA) as a master carpenter, technical director, resident designer, and actor. He became Artistic Director of Community Theatre, in Nantucket in 1980, and founded Actors Theatre of Nantucket, serving as Artistic Director for 20 years. 

Richard began writing poetry during high school and continues to this day. Currently, he is completing the editing of almost 60 years of his output. Seeking publication is his next goal. His claim to fame here in Hayesville is that his Great Aunt was Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C Campbell Folk School; he took a class there last fall and, using his life-long carpentry skills, built a beautiful yellow pine trestle table. He is also an accomplished harmonica player. He loves reading his poetry out loud.

Carroll S. Taylor holds graduate degrees in English and French as well as an EdS in Educational Leadership. She taught secondary French, English, Journalism, Creative Writing, and ESL. As a journalism advisor for high school students, she assisted in the publication of school newspapers and yearbooks, teaching both writing and layout/design. After retiring as a secondary teacher, she became a part-time instructor at Columbus State University, Columbus, Georgia, teaching freshman composition and freshman seminars. Taylor is the author of two young adult novels, Chinaberry Summer and Chinaberry Summer: On the Other Side, published by New Plains Press, Auburn, Alabama. She is currently writing the third novel in the series, Chinaberry Summer: Down by the Water. 

Taylor enjoys writing in all forms, including poetry and novels. She loves reading, gardening, and studying nature, especially reptiles and amphibians. Readers may find her journal blog at chinaberrysummer.com and follow her at facebook/chinaberrysummer.

For more information about this event, please contact Glenda Beall at: glendabeall@msn.com.