Karen Paul Holmes Featured on The Writer's Almanac

Garrison Keillor Recited "Rental Cottage, Maine" on October 16, 2019

In what Karen Paul Holmes calls her "poetry dream come true," the popular daily audio program The Writer's Almanac selected a poem from her second book, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin 2018). Keillor, host of the long-running Prairie Home Companion, has a voice immediately recognized by his worldwide fans.  You can hear this poem as well as all his broadcasts at GarrisonKeillor.com.

Karen's first book was Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014). Chosen a Best Emerging Poet, three of her poems appeared in Stay Thirsty Media's 2019 poetry volume with well-loved poets such as Billy Collins. Karen's other publications include Prairie Schooner, Valparaiso Review, Tar River Poetry, Poet Lore, and many journals and books, including two anthologies of Georgia poets. 

She founded and hosts The Side Door Poets in Atlanta and Writers’ Night Out in Blairsville, GA. A freelance business writer, she also teaches writing classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, Writer’s Circle in Hayesville, NC, and other venues. Lake Chatuge and the mountains inspire much of her poetry, which also includes stories of personal joys and losses.

Join Karen the weekend of Valentine's Day, 2020 when she teaches "Love Songs & Poetry" at the Folk School. 

The next Writers' Night Out is November 8 at 7 pm at the Union County Community Center, Blairsville. Rosemary Royston and Diana Anhalt are featured. Sign up for open mic at the door (3 minutes of poetry or prose). 

To learn more about Karen's work, visit www.karenpaulholmes.com .

Meet our Writers' Night Out Headliners: Linda Jones & Alan Cone

October 11, 7 pm

Union County Community Center

Blairsville, GA

Open Mic follows the reading

Join us for Linda's intelligent, heartfelt poetry; and Alan's smart, quirky prose. (Read his bio below for a sample). 

Linda Grayson Jones is an Associate Professor of Biology and Dean of Math and Science at Young Harris College. She has read and written poetry since childhood and recalls reading The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes to her third-grade classmates. With a B.S. in Biology from Stetson University, an M.A. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Pathology from Vanderbilt University, Linda's career path was primarily in academic biomedical research, but in 2009 she returned to her first love—teaching. She remains a reader and writer of poetry and is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. She credits North Carolina poet Nancy Simpson (1938-2018) for encouraging her to use Grayson Jones as her published poet’s name.

 Alan Cone is the author of many short stories and a novel, The History of the Decline and Fall of Roland Arnheiter. He explains that he “comes to North Georgia by way of Texas, on our nation’s frontier, where a man writes with both fists or perishes.” Alan's work is anchored always in a common man’s self-effacing humility. His penchant for dry humor and sarcasm is reflected in his artist’s statement: “With acuity and wisdom, with perceptiveness and whimsy, I usher audiences through an odyssey of freshman-level erudition and beyond. My quietly courageous abasement of the writer’s dais will leave you challenged, thoughtful, hungry for less.”  He also admits that he does not actually smoke a pipe.

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.