Joseph Bathanti and Mountain Wordsmiths

 The large group of writers who attended Mountain Wordsmiths Thursday morning had the pleasure of hearing Joseph Bathanti read and talk for about thirty minutes. Then he answered questions and had dialogue with those who were eager to talk to him about his poetry, his writing program, and his environmental views about mountaintop removal. 

One of the things I like best about Joseph is his casual demeanor and his genuine appreciation for his audience. We all felt we could speak up and join in the discussion. To purchase his latest book visit this link to LSU Press. His new book is Light at the Seams. Read more about it. You will want to own this book.

Carroll Taylor is the founder and leader of Mountain Wordsmiths and none of us knew it would be such a popular event for NCWN-West. Carroll's easy manner and casual ways make everyone feel comfortable. At this recent event, we had Ken Chamblee, noted poet, Pat Zick, author of novels, nonfiction, and now Netwest county Representative for Cherokee County in North Carolina. We had Jill Jennings from Florida sitting in with us as well as other writers from distant places. 

Part of the enjoyment of this online group is seeing the poets and writers from the far reaches of the NCWN-West region gather to visit and share their views and their writing. Mountain Wordsmiths has brought our Netwest writers closer than ever. I used to try to visit the distant counties and meet with reps and members, but COVID put a stop to that. However, we will not be stopped.

Carroll Taylor

Karen Holmes

Carroll's Mountain Wordsmiths and Karen Paul Holmes's Writers' Night Out are on Zoom and each month we are delighted to see local friends and writers and poets from across the country on our Zoom screen. 

Please feel free to join us for these events you can only find on Zoom. 

Contact Carroll at vibiaperpetua@gmail.com for Mountain Wordsmith's Zoom invitation. Contact Karen Paul Holmes at kpaulholmes AT protonmail DOT COM to receive your link for Writers' Night Out. You can ask Karen and Carroll to put you on their contact list and you will receive the announcement of the guests each month and the Zoom link.

If you have questions for me, Glenda Beall, about reading or attending, email glendabeall@msn.com. 

Writers' Night Out with guest, Joseph Bathanti

 December 11, Friday, 7:00 PM - Join Writers' Night Out on Zoom when our award-winning guest will be:

Joseph Bathanti , former Poet Laureate of North Carolina (2012-14) and recipient of the 2016 North Carolina Award for Literature. Bathanti lives in Vilas, North Carolina, with his wife, Joan, and two children. Bathanti and his wife met while both were working with the VISTA program.

·         He is the author of ten books of poetry, including Communion Partners; Anson County; The Feast of All Saints;

·         This Metal, nominated for the National Book Award, and winner of the Oscar Arnold Young Award;

·         Land of Amnesia;

·         Restoring Sacred Art, winner of the 2010 Roanoke Chowan Prize, awarded annually by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for best book of poetry in a given year;

·         Sonnets of the Cross;

·         Concertina, winner of the 2014 Roanoke Chowan Prize;

·         The 13^th Sunday after Pentecost, released by LSU Press in 2016.

·         His novel, East Liberty, won the 2001 Carolina Novel Award. His novel, Coventry, won the 2006 Novello Literary Award.

·         His book of stories, The High Heart, won the 2006 Spokane Prize.

·         They Changed the State: The Legacy of North Carolina’s Visiting Artists, 1971-1995, his book of nonfiction, was published in early 2007.

·         His more recent book of personal essays, Half of What I Say Is Meaningless, winner of the Will D. Campbell Award for Creative Nonfiction, is from Mercer University Press.

·         The novel, The Life of the World to Come, was released from University of South Carolina Press in late 2014.

A new volume of poems, Light at the Seam, is forthcoming in 2022 from LSU Press. Bathanti is the McFarlane Family Distinguished Professor of Interdisciplinary Education & Writer-in-Residence of Appalachian State University’s Watauga Residential College in Boone, NC.

He served as the 2016 Charles George VA Medical Center Writer-in-Residence in Asheville, NC, and is the co-founder of the Medical Center’s Creative Writing Program.

 NCWN -West Members will be mailed the Zoom Link for the meeting. For those who want to read at open mic, contact glendabeall@msn.com

Writers' Night Out for November and December

 

Writers' Night Out - 7:00 pm 2nd Friday of each month - Join us on Zoom

October – Scott Owens -  Host Glenda Beall

November - Paul Higdon - Host Karen Holmes

December – Joseph Bathanti – Host Carroll Taylor

Some authors and poets who will be present for A Day for Writers. Deadline is August 19.

Ed Southern, Executive Director for NC Writers' Network. Photo made in Sylva, NC at City Lights Books some years ago when Ed was new on the job. He was the first Exe. Director to visit us here in the mountains. He will be with us on August 24 for A Day for Writers.

Carol Crawford, carolcrawfordediting.com is a writer and a teacher as well as an editor. Her students always gain important knowledge about writing when attending classes with Carol.

Joseph Bathanti 

Poet, novelist, and award-winning writer and educator. I hear from writers and poets who know him. They all like him. He will be with us on August 24 in Sylva at the Jackson County Public Library for A Day for Writers.

Writers, from back, left, Joan Howard, Brenda Kay Ledford, Mary Ricketson, Diana Smith at Carol Crawford's Blue Ridge Writers' Conference . Janice Moore sits in front. Even seasoned writers and poets know the value of attending writing conferences.

Pat Vestal has a history in publishing and play writing. Her plays have been published in NYC.

This is the cover of one of C. Hope Clark's mysteries. The main character is female and Clark's books are page-turners.

A Day for Writers 2019 in Sylva at the Jackson County Library

NCWN-West and the Jackson County Regional Public Library will host A Day for Writers in Sylva, NC on Saturday, August 24. 

It has always been the goal of this program to bring the best to the west with reasonable fees so all writers in the mountains can benefit from membership without traveling long distances.

C. Hope Clark, author of two mystery series is keynote speaker. Clark’s 35,000 readers of her Funds for Writers Newsletter give her much credit for their success. Clark will speak on marketing and on writing the novel.

Poets will enjoy Joseph Bathanti, poet laureate of North Carolina, 2012 – 2014. He is Writer-in-Residence of Appalachian State University’s Watauga Residential College in Boone, NC. Bathanti, author of ten poetry books, is recipient of the 2016 North Carolina Award in Literature. His most recent volume is The 13th Sunday after Pentecost (LSU Press, 2016).

Joseph Bathanti, Poet

David Joy, novelist, will present Writing Centered in Place/Landscape as Character. His books are highly praised as a voice of Appalachia. He is the author of the Edgar nominated novel Where All Light Tends To Go (Putnam, 2015), as well as the novels The Weight Of This World (Putnam, 2017) and The Line That Held Us (Putnam, 2018). His memoir Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman's Journey (Bright Mountain Books, 2011), was a finalist for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the Ragan Old North State Award. 

Patricia Vestal and Katie Winkler will teach how to write a ten minute play. Both of these writers have had plays produced on stage. Katie Winkler has taught English composition and British literature for over 23 years at Blue Ridge Community College. During that time, she has been active with the college's drama department as a writer, actor, and director. Pat Vestal’s plays were done off-off Broadway and were on NYC TV. She taught play-writing at the college level.

Carol Crawford who owns www.carolcrawfordediting.com and is a well-published nonfiction writer as well as poet, will teach what to do before you submit your manuscript. Carol teaches writing at the John C. Campbell Folk School. She is the author of The Habit of Mercy, Poems about Daughters and Mothers. Her essays and short stories have been published in numerous journals. She has been program coordinator for the annual Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference since its inception in 1996. 

Karen Paul Holmes, poet and teacher, will discuss Metaphors, Images and Similes. Holmes has two full-length poetry collections, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin, 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014). She was chosen a Best Emerging Poet by Stay Thirsty Media and appeared in their 2019 collection of 22 poets including Billy Collins and Robert Pinsky. 

Karen Paul Holmes

Writers may join NCWN at the time of registration. 

Member fees for the conference are $65. 

Non-members pay $78.  Student fee is $35. 

Coffee, pastries, soft drinks, water and lunch are included.

Find the registration form on the sidebar at  www.netwestwriters.blogspot.com. Complete the  form and mail with your check to NCWN-West, %Glenda Beall, PO Box 843, Hayesville, NC 28904 or register online at www.ncwriters.org. 

Deadline for mail in and online registrations is August 19. Contact Glenda Beall, gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com for more information

C. Hope Clark, Keynote Speaker for A  Day for Writers  

.

Quote from Joseph Bathanti, poet laureate of NC, 2012 - 2014

Accessibility

When I first started writing poetry as a high schooler, I adopted what I call “The Seven Layers of Enigma” model. I wrote a verse that I did not understand, but was sure that others would marvel at simply because it was so inscrutable. 

I wrote this way because I had found few poems – dished out to me in school by well-meaning teachers – that I understood in the vein that one understands prose. Once I began reading on my own and discovered poems and poets that used clear language that told stories, I was evangelized, and my poems became more narrative, more rooted in stories, often about working-class citizens, and much more accessible to hopefully everyone, including folks who don’t typically like poetry. Robert Lowell, in his poem, “Epilogue,” writes “Yet why not say what happened?” I ascribe to that.

I’m decidedly a narrative poet, although I don’t let that get in the way if I want to step outside those lines and fool around with other kinds of deliveries, and I’m also very fond of writing sonnets, as well as writing in other traditional forms. Nevertheless, I do find my central story in narrative because, at heart, I’m a storyteller. Robert Creeley once famously said, “Form is never more than an extension of content.” I do start a poem with a notion of style and shape, but tend to allow Creeley’s dictum to guide the ultimate temperament and form the finished poem will take.

Bathanti will be one of the presenters at A Day for Writers, August 24, in Sylva, NC at the Jackson County Public Library. 

"Singing It Forward" With Kathryn Stripling Byer at the Lanier Library Poetry Festival

What: Lanier Library Poetry Festival

Where: 72 Chestnut Street, Tryon, North Carolina 28782

When: April 26, 2014

April in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains is a beautiful month, one might even say pure poetry. So please join Kathryn Stripling Byer and other celebrated poets, including Joseph Bathanti, at the Lanier Library on April 26, 2014, for a day of inspiration, education and a sociable gathering of creative minds.

The Lanier Library in Tryon, North Carolina will be hosting a new literary festival celebrating one of the most beloved and advanced forms of literature in the history of the written word: POETRY.

They have invited some of the country’s most respected poets to lead a variety of writing workshops; to discuss poetry’s importance in our lives; to offer publication advice; and to give free public readings of their work and autograph their books.

A highlight of the day is a catered luncheon with honored guest Mark Doty. Doty has published eight collections of his poetry, including Fire to Fire, which won the coveted National Book Award in Poetry in 2008.  The festival concludes with a public reception at the Lanier Library to announce the winners of the sixth annual Sidney Lanier Poetry Competition (open to poets in North and South Carolina and Georgia). 

This year’s judge of the competition is current North Carolina Poet Laureate Joseph Bathanti, who will speak at the reception.  In addition, the prize recipients will read their winning poems.  Hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served.

Registration deadline is April 15. For a registration form and full details: www.lanierlib.org/poetryfestival2014

Table Rock Writers Workshop at Wildacres

Children’s Writing Added to Table Rock Workshop: Piedmont Laureate John Claude Bemis Will Teach

Johnclaudebemis.com

For more information on the Table Rock Writers Workshop, held September 9-13, 2013 at Wildacres Retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, please visit http://tablerockwriters.com.  Classes are small, register early.  All meals and accommodations are included.

Former student Bradley Scheel says, “John is the rare artist who is so passionate about the craft that he is willing to share everything he has on the subject freely and without reserve. Every moment was fun, every class inspirational. No time will be more wisely spent.”

I had the good fortune to attend the Table Rock Writers Workshop last year. My teacher was Darnell Arnault, a wonderful writer. Other excellent instructors are Abigail DeWitt, fiction writer, Joseph Bathanti, poetry, Judy Goldman, memoir and personal essays. The classes are filled with writers who give good feedback. I thoroughly enjoyed my week there.

It is held at Wildacres Retreat, one of my very favorite places. Check it out here.

Spring Literary Festival at Western Carolina University - Free events

From City Lights Book Store in Sylva, the following announcements:

(April 7-10): WCU Spring Literary Festival
Western Carolina University's sixth annual Spring Literary Festival will be held on campus in Cullowhee April 7-10 and includes a wonderful line-up of authors. Books will be available for sale at each reading, and all events are free and open to the public. As an encouragement to attendance, campus parking regulations will not be enforced for attendees from the community (as any tickets will be forgiven). For more information, please call the WCU English Department at 227-3265.

Monday, April 7, 2008 7:30 p.m.Location: Western Carolina University, Coulter Auditorium, Memorial Drive, Cullowhee, NC 28723 Novelist Lee Smith reads from On Agate Hill. Performance of On Agate Hill by Barbara Bates Smith and Jeff Sebens immediately follows.Growing up in the Appalachian Mountains of southwestern Virginia, nine-year-old Lee Smith was already writing-and selling, for a nickel apiece- stories about her neighbors in the coal boomtown of Grundy and the nearby isolated "hollers." In 1968, she published her first novel, The Last Day the Dog Bushes Bloomed.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 4:00 p.m.Location: Western Carolina University, University Center Auditorium, Memorial Drive, Cullowhee, NC 28723 Poet Thomas Lux will read from his work.Thomas Lux's many books of poetry include The Cradle Place; The Street of Clocks; New and Selected Poems, 1975-1995, which was a finalist for the 1998 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

Tuesday, April 8, 2008 7:30 p.m.Location: Western Carolina University, University Center Auditorium, Memorial Drive, Cullowhee, NC 28723. Author and commentator Dagoberto Gilb reads from his work. Dagoberto Gilb's first story collection, The Magic of Blood, won the PEN/Hemingway Award. He is also author of The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuña, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His newest novel is The Flowers, published this year. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and as commentaries on NPR's "Fresh Air."

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 4:00 p.m.Location: Western Carolina University, Coulter Auditorium, Memorial Drive, Cullowhee, NC 28723. Poet's Panel: Joseph Bathanti, Sarah Lindsay, Carolyn Beard Whitlow. Poet and novelist Joseph Bathanti is the author of four books of poetry: Communion Partners; Anson County; The Feast of All Saints; and This Metal, which was nominated for The National Book Award, and won the 1997 Oscar Arnold Young Award from The North Carolina Poetry Council for best book of poems by a North Carolina writer. His novels are East Liberty and Coventry, was a winner of the 2006 Novello Literary Award. His collection of short stories, The High Heart, was winner of the 2007 Spokane Prize. Sarah Lindsay is the author of Primate Behavior, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Mount Clutter, as well as two chapbooks, Bodies of Water and Insomniac's Lullaby.Poet Carolyn Beard Whitlow is Charles A. Dana Professor of English at Guilford College in Greensboro, where she teaches Creative Writing and African-American Literature. Her most recent collection of poems, Vanished, won the 2006 Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 7:30 p.m.Location: Western Carolina University, Coulter Auditorium, Memorial Drive, Cullowhee, NC 28723. Novelist Pat Conroy reads from his work.Pat Conroy is the bestselling and award-winning author of The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music and My Losing Season. His novels are populated with domineering fathers, southern belles of steel, and inexorable tragedy; all are elements the author is familiar with from his own life.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 12:00 p.m.Location: Western Carolina University, University Center Auditorium, Memorial Drive, Cullowhee, NC 28723. Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Cathy Smith Bowers presents Caleb Beissert, Haley Jones, and Tom Lambert. Cathy Smith Bowers, Distinguished Poet for the western region, presents emerging poets Caleb Beissert, Haley Jones, and Tom Lambert. The Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series supports the mission of the North Carolina Poetry Society to foster the reading, writing, and enjoyment of poetry across the state. Three Distinguished Poets, one from each region, mentor a middle-school, a high-school, and a college or university student.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 4:00 p.m.Location: Western Carolina University, Coulter Auditorium, Memorial Drive, Cullowhee, NC 28723. Poet Gloria Vando reads from her work.Poet Gloria Vando is publisher /editor of Helicon Nine Editions, a nonprofit literary press she founded in 1977. Her book of poems, Shadows and Supposes, was named the Best Poetry Book of 2003 by the Latino Hall of Fame.

Thursday, April 10, 2008 7:30 p.m.Location: Western Carolina University, Coulter Auditorium, Memorial Drive, Cullowhee, NC 28723. Novelist Russell Banks reads from his work (an LCE event). Russell Banks grew up in a working- class world that has played a major role in shaping his writing. His titles include The Darling, Cloudsplitter, Affliction, The Sweet Hereafter, Searching for Survivors, Hamilton Stark, The New World, The Book of Jamaica, Trailerpark, Continental Drift, Success Stories, and Rule of the Bone. The Angel on the Roof is a collection of thirty years of Banks' short fiction.