Hayesville Library to Host Local Writers Nov. 12 for Reading and Book Signing

You are invited:

 

Poet Scott Owens to Teach Workshop at Moss Memorial Library June 16

We are fortunate to have Scott Owens teach a workshop for us at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC, Friday, June 16, 2:00-4:45 PM.

Scott Owens writes poetry as if he were a painter. Painters see more than other people see. They look beyond the obvious. Scott sees and invites the reader to visualize images, actions, beliefs, purposes, motives, and results of what he has gleaned from his life as a child, a husband, a father, a teacher, a human being who took notice.

Workshop Title: Inspiration Surrounds Us: How to Have Enough to Write About for at Least 4 Lifetimes.

Fee: $45.00 A portion of the fee goes to NCWN-West.

Send a check before June 10, made to Glenda Beall, and mail to 581 Chatuge Lane, Hayesville, NC 28904

Scott Owens

Scott is the author of 19 collections of poetry, and more than 1200 published poems. He has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the NC Writers' Network, the NC Poetry Society, the Poetry Society of SC, and many others.

His poems have been featured on "The Writers' Almanac" 7 times, "Poetry in Plain Sight" 4 times, and "Your Daily Poem" 13 times.

He is Professor of Poetry at Lenoir Rhyne University and has taught creative writing for more than 20 years, including in excess of 40 community or conference workshops.

His books cover a wide range of topics including a love of nature, surviving an abusive childhood, growing up on a farm, writing, religion, dreams and nightmares, parenting, politics, philosophy, existentialism, and of course, love.

He has collaborated with poet, Pris Campbell, on two novels in poetry; with artist, Missy Cleveland, on an illustrated collection of poems for children; and with photographer, Clayton Joe Young, on two collections featuring images of the North Carolina Piedmont. 

In his spare time, Scott owns and operates a successful coffee shop in downtown Hickory. He serves as President of the Hickory Downtown Development Association. He has hosted Poetry Hickory at his coffee shop for 17 years. Several of our NCWN-West poets have read there.

Scott has always loved the NC mountains. In his younger days he was an avid hiker, who spent one summer hiking the mountains to more than 100 waterfalls. He is also an avid birdwatcher, and on a recent weeklong visit to the Smokies, saw 23 bald eagles.

Born and raised on farms and in mill villages in and around Greenwood, SC, he now lives on an acre near downtown Hickory where he constantly weeds his garden, prunes his trees, and tends his flock of 8 egg-producing chickens.

He says you can take the boy off the farm, but you can never take the farm out of the boy.

Many thanks to Mary Fonda, and Moss Library

We wish good health and happiness to Mary Fonda our long-time librarian for the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC as she retires this year. We are grateful for Mary and the library which has always been supporters of our writers and NCWN-West. In my travels around western NC and visits to libraries far and wide, I hear nothing but praise and compliments for Moss Library. 

Of course, Mary's library assistant, Deborah Kenyon, is always there to make sure everything works like a well-oiled clock. She does her very best to help us schedule meetings for NCWN-West events at the library. It is perfect for us because it is handicap accessible and all local writers can attend.

We look forward to working with the new Branch Manager, Griffin Anderson. We hear good things about him. 

We are delighted that Deborah continues as Library Assistant. She sent the following information about the library and you might want to copy and keep this handy.

The hours for the Moss Memorial Library (except for holidays and inclement weather) are:

•  Tuesdays from 9 AM to 8 PM
•  Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 9 AM to 5 PM

Moss Memorial Library Phone Number:  828-389-8401

 Please send emails concerning the Moss Memorial Library to our respective Nantahala Library emails:

•  Griffin Anderson, Branch Manager:   ganderson@nantahalalibrary.org
•  Deborah Kenyon, Library Assistant:   dkenyon@nantahalalibrary.org

This would allow the Moss Memorial Library to respond sooner to scheduling requests.

 Of course, Coffee with the Poets and Writers is on schedule to resume its monthly meetings beginning Wednesday, March 8, 2023, in the library's meeting room.

 

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. 

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

April is Poetry Month and We Celebrate at Moss Memorial Library

We will celebrate in Hayesville, NC at the Moss Memorial Library with award-winning poet, Brenda Kay Ledford reading from her new book, Red Plank House.

Brenda Kay Ledford

 A seventh-generational native of Clay County, Ledford grew up in a red-plank house eating apple butter, wearing homemade clothes, playing hopscotch, and singing shape-note music in country churches. Later she took piano lessons and played hymns for worship services.

Ledford was an honor graduate of Hayesville High School.  She rode a bus over the winding dirt roads.  It was a long route and she observed the mountains changing colors with seasons.  That’s when she grew to appreciate the beauty of our region.

Her favorite teachers were Leslie Carter, media specialist, and Josephine Thurman, senior-year English instructor.  Both educators instilled within Ledford the magic of books.

After Ledford was graduated from HHS, she worked as a clerk-typist with the FBI in Washington, DC.  It was cultural shock.  Ledford returned to her beloved roots in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
She worked as a secretary at Hinton Rural Life Center.  She also taught Sunday school and directed Bible School.  Ledford loved children and wanted to become an educator. She earned a MA in Early Childhood Education from Western Carolina University and taught the fourth grade at Murphy Elementary School.

While she was teaching, Ledford’s father got Hodgkin’s disease.  She obtained an emergency medical technician certification to help care for him.  She worked in the emergency room at Towns County Hospital part-time and with the Clay County EMS.

 Ledford also took a Creative Writing class at Tri-County Community College under Nancy Simpson to renew her teacher’s license.  Nancy was her mentor and encouraged Ledford to submit her work for publication.  Her poetry has appeared in Pembroke Magazine, Asheville Poetry Review, Our State, Angels on Earth, Chicken Soup for the Soul, 39 Old Mountain Press anthologies, and many other journals. Ledford’s latest poetry book, Red Plank House, was released by Kelsay Books, available at Amazon.com.

Ledford is presently working on a collection of poetry for children.  Many poems are about her great-niece, Reagan Blanche.  Ledford’s favorite pastime is reading to her little niece and viewing the world through the joyful eyes of kids.

Each month Coffee with the Poets and Writers meets at the library on the third Wednesday of the month, 10:30 AM. We feature a member of NCWN-West, sponsoring organization, and we hold Open Mic to allow our guests to read an original poem or two.

This month we will celebrate two poets who were special to us in this region, the late Nancy Simpson and Kathryn Stripling Byer. Everyone is invited to bring a poem by one of them to read at open mic along with an original poem.

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.


 

Coffee with the Poets and Writers' resumes 3/21/2018, with Bob Grove and Kathleen Knapp, in Hayesville, NC

The North Carolina Writers’ Network–West will hold the first meeting of Coffee with the Poets and Writers for the year of 2018. Poets and writers will gather at the Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson Street, Hayesville, NC, on Wednesday, March 21, 2018, at10:30 AM. The public is invited and there is no cost to attend. Refreshments are served and non-writers are welcome. Many of those present adjourn to a local restaurant for lunch after the meeting.

This month two members of NCWN-West, Bob Grove and Kathleen Knapp, both residents of Clay County, are featured. Bob is known for his humorous stories and Kathy writes memoir. Bob will make you laugh and Kathy might provoke a tear.

                                                  

  Bob Grove was born in Cleveland, OH. He earned his Bachelor of  

Arts at Kent State University and his Master of Science at Florida Atlantic University. His diversified curriculum enabled him to teach courses in English, journalism, creative writing, physics, chemistry, biology and psychology.

Now retired after 35 years as founder of Grove Enterprises, Grove has more time to write. Most recently, he published a mystery novella, Secrets of Magnolia Manor, his memoir, Misadventures of an Only Child, a collection of children’s stories Adventures of Kaylie and Jimmy, and has written several flash fiction stories.

Grove has been awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals in the Silver Arts Competition in the Cherokee County, NC senior games, in their literature competition. You are invited to visit Bob on his website at bobgrove.org.

Kathleen (Kathy) Knapp was born into a military family. She spent most of her childhood living abroad. She draws on those cultural experiences to write her entertaining memoirs. As a creative person, with a degree in Graphic Arts, Kathleen has embraced this new venue and is memorializing her late family’s history for future generations. It is her ultimate dream to publish books for children.

Kathleen also enjoys volunteering for the Hurlburt-Johnson Friendship House, Inc. in Murphy, NC, using her writing skills to promote through the newspaper, awareness of the county’s only homeless shelter. As a member of North Carolina Writer’s Network West, she enjoys challenging writing classes, attending conferences, and nurturing her newfound craft.


To participate in the Open Mic session, those attending are requested to limit their reading to one or two poems or no more than three pages, double-spaced, prose writing.

NCWN-West is a program of the North Carolina Writers’ Network, one of the largest state literary organizations in the country.

Contact Glenda C. Beall, NCWN-West Program Coordinator, at: glendabeall@msn.com<mailto:glendabeall@msn.com> 

for more information or phone: 828-389-4441.