Coffee with the Poets & Writers features Author Joan Ellen Gage and Storyteller Kanute Rarey on Wednesday, August 16, 2017, at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

Wednesday, August 16, 2017, Coffee with the Poets and Writers will meet at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC. North Carolina Writers’ Network-West sponsors this event which meets at 10:30 a.m. on the third Wednesday of the month.

Two members, Joan Gage, poet and Kanute Rarey, known for his storytelling, are featured on the program this month. Coffee with the Poets and Writers is open to the public at no charge. Bring a poem or short prose, 1000 words or less, and read at Open Mic. Have coffee and cookies with us. 

Joan Ellen Gage is an author of humor and inspiration written from her own unique perspective. Her recipe for her writing focuses on staying upbeat and laughing at her own foibles. Joan’s photos are the spice in the mix that serve to punctuate the writing and add that special garnish to her creations.

Gage has written and published five books, Water Running Downhill!, Embracing Your Inner Cheerleader!, A Redhead Looks At 60, Trinity's Adventures in Imagination, and a special edition of Water Running Downhill! the Rose Edition as a tribute to her friend Rose Helena Macedo Kull, all available as eBooks.  

Joan Ellen Gage has given author talks, and had several radio interviews. She is a member of NC Writers’ Network-West, serving as an administrator for their blog. Additionally, Ms. Gage has two blogs, Traveling at the Speed of Now, www.joanellengage.com, and A Redhead Blogs at 60!    https://joanszoneblogalicious @wordpress.com. Gage lives in Western North Carolina with her husband and their Belgian Tervuren dog, Magnolia.

Kanute Rary lives in Clay County, NC and is a storyteller as well as a writer. He may have been born and raised on a farm in rural Ohio, but Kanute Rarey moved to the mountains as soon as he could.  After a quarter of a century in the mountains of Alaska and North Carolina, storytelling is second nature to him. He says most of his stories are true… more or less. 

Rarey has studied storytelling with Elizabeth Ellis and Bil Lepp. Folks have heard him tell at the Georgia Mountain Storytelling Festival, the Moth StorySlam in Asheville, John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, and the Swapping Ground at the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, TN.  And you can find him regaling local folk around Hayesville, North Carolina at the Clay and Cherokee County care centers, the Clay County School System.  The guys at Pat’s Barber Shop will tell you Kanute is ready to compete in the Bigs. He is out to win the Whopper Hat.

Contact NCWN West Representative, Glenda Beall, at 828-389-4441 or glendabeall@msn.com  for more information.

Coffee with the Poets and Writers features writers Staci Lynn Bell and Joan M. Howard on June 21, 2017, 10:30 AM, at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

Coffee with the Poets and Writers will meet June 21, 2017, 10:30 AM at Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC. Staci Lynn Bell and Joan Howard will be featured members this month. 

Staci Lynn Bell, a Chicago native, has lived in Western North Carolina for the past 6 years. Having moved many times as a child, her best friends were her imagination, books and animals. Staci attended University of Wisconsin, Madison majoring in Communications. She relocated to SW Florida, gaining recognition as a 25 year radio and television personality and animal advocate.  She has been published in Wild Goose Poetry Review, 234 Journal, Old Mountain Press Anthologies and in Kakalak 2016. Bell has both a poem and short story in Wolf Warriors: The National Wolfwatcher Coalition Anthology. Staci is a member of the NCWN.

Joan M. Howard lives in Hiawassee and in Athens, Georgia. Joan loves to kayak on Lake Chatuge and take long walks on the Chatuge Dam. She holds a BA from Indiana University and an MA from the University of Oregon. Her poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies.  She published a poetry collection recently, Death and Empathy: My Sister Web, which is in memory of her sister, Webster and her husband Jack.

It has been said that, “Howard’s poetry will not only make you ache for something or someone lost; it will stitch together a broken heart.”

The public is invited to attend Coffee with the Poets and Writers. Everyone is invited to take part in Open Mic and read a poem or short piece of prose. 

This event is sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network West, a program of the state literary organization, North Carolina Writers’ Network. 

Contact Glenda Beall, 828-389-4441 or glendabeall@msn.com for more information.

Local Author Bob Grove to read at Coffee with the Poets and Writers, Wednesday, May 17, 2017, at 10:30 AM, at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

Coffee with the Poets and Writers, a monthly meeting at the Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson Street, Hayesville, NC, will feature Bob Grove on Wednesday, May 17, 2017, at 10:30 AM. Grove is a well-published author, and a member of NCWN-West. He facilitates the Netwest Prose Critique Group each month at Tri-County Community College.

Grove has been an ABC-TV public affairs director, an on-air personality, and the founder and publisher of Monitoring Times Magazine. He is an officer with the Ridgeline Literary Alliance, and he has published seventeen books and hundreds of articles in sixteen national magazines.

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.

He has been awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals in the Silver Arts Competition in the Cherokee County, NC senior games, in their literature competition.

Bob’s public readings are popular as a performance art form, typified by his annual December reading, in costume and dialect, of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the John C. Campbell Folk School. All his publications are available on Amazon Kindle, and he can be found online at www.bobgrove.org . Bob's readings entertain and his audience laughs with delight at his humor.

Coffee with the Poets and Writers is sponsored by the NC Writers Network-West, a program of the NC Writers’ Network, the largest literary organization in the state. The community is invited to attend and take part in the Open Mic reading, so bring a couple of poems or a short prose piece.

The group often goes to lunch at Angelo’s restaurant on the square in Hayesville after the reading and guests are invited to join them.

Contact Glenda Beall at: 828-389-4441

Writers Circle Around the Table

glendabeall@msn.com

www.glendacouncilbeall.com

Local poet Brenda Kay Ledford to read at Coffee With the Poets and Writers, on Wednesday, April 19, 2017, 10:30 AM, at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

Coffee with the Poets and Writers, a monthly literary event held at Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson Street, Hayesville, NC, will hold a reading at 10:30 AM, Wednesday, April 19, 2017. Brenda Kay Ledford, award winning poet and native of Clay County is featured on the program this month.

Ledford is a seventh-generational native of Clay County. She was an honor graduate of Hayesville High School, earned her MA in Education from Western Carolina University, and received a diploma of highest honors in Creative Writing from Stratford Career Institute.

Ledford's work has appeared in many journals including Our State, Woman's World, Country Extra, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Angels on Earth, 30 Old Mountain Press anthologies, and Blue Ridge Parkway Silver Anniversary Edition coffee-table book.

Aldrich Press published her poetry book, Crepe Roses, which won the 2015 Paul GreenMultimedia Award from the North Carolina Society of Historians. Ledford has received this award nine times for her books, her collections of oral history on Southern Appalachia, and her blogs:  http://blueridgepoet.blogspot.com and http://historicalhayesville.blogspot.com.  She also won the North Carolina Press Association's Journalism Contest Award for her feature on the John C. Campbell Folk School in 1999.

Ledford is listed with A Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, North Carolina Literary Map, North Carolina Storytelling Guild, and Who's Who in America. She has appeared on the "Common Cup," talk show on Windstream Communication's cable television and has interviewed on "The Blue Sky Show" on WJUL/WJRB Radio Station. Additionally, Ledford gives regional poetry readings.

We welcome the public to join us at Coffee with the Poets and Writers. Please listen and enjoy, or read a poem or short prose piece at Open Mic. We are a friendly audience. After the meeting, we go out to lunch and invite our guests to join us.

NCWN-West is a program of the largest literary organization in the state of North Carolina, The North Carolina Writers' Network. Contact Glenda Beall, 828-389-4441 or gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com for more information.