Photo Highlights from A Day for Writers, writing event, Sylva, NC, August 24, 2019

Carroll Taylor, co-chair for the event, and Jessica Philyaw, Library staff member

, 

C. Hope Clark and her husband, Gary

Meagan Lucas and Benjamin Cutler (in background)

Catherine Carter, Jackson County Rep for NCWN-West

Pat Vestal, instructor for play writing class

NCWN Executive Director, Ed Southern

Registration

Karen Paul Holmes, instructor for poetry class

Mary Ricketson, Linda Jones, and Janice Moore

Karen Paul Holmes with Glenda Beall

Katie Winkler, instructor for play writing class

Former Poet Laureate of NC, Joseph Bathanti 

Carol Crawford of www.carolcrawfordediting.com

C. Hope Clark opens the event

Bird's eye view of registration

Brent Martin with Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin and Susan Lefler

David Joy

Ed Southern, Glenda Beall, and Chris Wilcox  of City Lights Books

Volunteers Marcia Barnes, Hugh and Carroll Taylor, and Joan Howard

Brent Martin

Carroll Taylor

Charlie Wilkinson

Karen Paul Holmes

Louis Giron

Mary Ricketson

Panel members Karen Paul Holmes, Meagan Lucas, Joseph Bathanti, C. Hope Clark, and Glenda Beall

White Cross School - informative and interesting

If you aren't following the White Cross School blog on the NCWN website, you are missing important news for writers.

In this post 
 https://www.ncwriters.org/whitecross/2018/11/20/momlovesbest/ we learn why books should be in the homes of all children. If children are read to, they learn to enjoy books and will soon be reading them as well.

As a former elementary school teacher, I could tell which of my students were exposed to books in their homes. Some of them loved to read and were careful with books while others had no use for them. Those who liked books were usually the students who made better grades.

I think almost any subject can be taught in a way children will learn if there is a book written on that subject, a book that tells an interesting story. Text books are often dull and uninteresting. But story books grab a child's imagination and run with it. 

If you write for children or if you have children, read this blog post on the Whitecross blog.


Every writer is excited to get the first contract for publishing a book.

Before you sign that contract, make sure you’re as prepared as possible for just what you’re signing on for—and what you’re signing away.  

In this post, a book is recommended for writers to help them understand what they are signing when they get that contract. I'd say this is one of the most important things any writer needs to know. 

We are fortunate that we have the opportunity to read this informative blog and learn from it. As members of NCWN, we don't take advantage of what is offered to us. Visit the NCWN website and read the blog. You will get your money's worth, I assure you. 


Have you had a bad experience after signing a contract for publishing a book? Tell us about it in our comments section.

Do You Know about Marsha White Warren? What does she mean to NCWN-West?

We are kept up to date on the literary world by North Carolina Writers' Network. Did you know about the NC Literary Hall of Fame? New inductees this year will include Marsha White Warren who was Executive Director of NCWN in 1987 – 1996. She is responsible for our program, NCWN-West.

This is from Nancy Simpson’s history of NCWN-West:

“When NCWN-West Began

During 1990, NCWN Executive Director Marsha Warren mailed a survey to NCWN members living here in the mountains. At the same time, then NC Arts Council Literature Director in Raleigh, Debbie McGill, also mailed a different survey to writers. Both organizations seemed to want to know about the mountain writers. They asked questions about what we needed. Included was a place for comments. The results of both surveys moved these leaders to reach out and help writers in the mountains.

In 1991, I applied for and received an Artist Fellowship in Poetry at NCAC. Soon after I got a call from NCAC Literary Director Debbie McGill congratulating me and asking me to come have dinner with her in Sylva (a two and a half hour drive for me at the time.) I immediately said, “Yes.”

A few days later, I received a formal letter on NCAC stationery signed by Kathryn Stripling Byer. That letter was sent to all writers in the area, asking us to come to a meeting on the same evening that I was invited to have dinner with Debbie Mc Gill. I rode over the mountains with Bettie Sellers of Young Harris, Georgia (she would become Poet Laureate of Georgia) who had also received a letter.

At dinner before the meeting, Debbie McGill asked me to help form a writing group in the mountains west of Asheville. I said I would. That evening in Jackson County, Rita Rudd, a writer who lived there, volunteered to get organized in Jackson County. I took a copy of the membership list of NCWN and NCAC members living in Clay County (Hayesville), in Cherokee County (Murphy), and in Macon County (Franklin). I set up a meeting for NCWN members in those three counties. We met in Murphy. …

I will always be grateful to Marsha Warren, who worked with dedication to get NCWN West organized. She is the one who named the counties and areas to be served as NCWN West: Cherokee County, Clay County, Graham County, Haywood County, Jackson County, Macon County, Swain County, Transylvania County, and adjacent counties in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina. During my service as Program Coordinator, I was asked to include Qualla Boundary.”  Read more here.

New Inductees to Be Honored October 7

SOUTHERN PINES—On Sunday, October 7, at 2:00 pm at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities in Southern Pines, the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame will welcome five new inductees.

James W. Clark, Jr., Randall Kenan, Jill McCorkle, Penelope Niven, and Marsha White Warren will join the sixty inductees currently enshrined.

Marsha Warren 

Marsha White Warren was an elementary school teacher, poet, and children’s book author when she became Executive Director of the North Carolina Writers’ Network in 1987, only two years after its founding. She would serve in that role until 1996. During those years she helped Sam Ragan develop and open the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, as well as serving on numerous state and national literary boards and as a consultant to literary centers in Tennessee, Massachusetts, and Idaho. In 1991, she also became director of the Paul Green Foundation and is still with the Foundation after twenty-seven years. In that position, she has overseen $575,000 in grants to nonprofits that support the arts and human rights. Her awards include the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities, R. Hunt Parker Memorial Award for Lifetime Contributions to Literature, Sam Ragan Award for Contributions to the Fine Arts, and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Andrews College. She lives in Chapel Hill.

Like Nancy Simpson, I am grateful to Marsha White Warren for creating NCWN-West. I moved to NC in 1995, just as our program was taking off and building community for writers here in the mountains. 
Thanks to Nancy, Kay Byer and to Marsha Warren, we are a thriving organization, the western arm of NCWN, but many, many writers and poets don’t know how we began. Now you do. 

Congratulations to Marsha Warren, 2018 NC Hall of Fame Inductee.

We can't avoid new technology. We need to embrace it to stay current.

I don't know how often you read the blog on the NCWN site, but I find it most interesting, especially the past two posts.

https://www.ncwriters.org/whitecross/

We are all dealing with new technology now even if we don't want to learn new things. The recent posts are:

New Literary Podcasts for NC

and Technology can help you write better 

I have become a big fan of podcasts lately. I love to learn and I listen to  podcasts that teach me. New Literary Podcasts for NC was created by author Landis Wade, a member of the NC Writers' Network in Charlotte, NC and will have guests on his show that appeal to writers.

Landis will have an exhibitor table for the podcast at the NCWN 2018 Fall Conference in Charlotte.

Both articles give a hint to some of what we will see at the Conference in Charlotte. Have you heard about Freedom?  

This company is a sponsor for the Fall Conference, and I think I want to learn more. How many times are we distracted by social media or something on the Internet when we are trying to write? We can just click on Freedom and none of those notifications will pop up and stop our thought processes. 

Our members don't always take advantage of what is offered by our parent organization. Click on www.ncwriters.org and check out the White Cross Blog to keep up with the literary world in North Carolina and more. Charles Fiore and Ed Southern do a great job with it.

Poets Catherine Carter and Mary Ricketson to read at CWPW, August 15, 2018, at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC

On Wednesday, August 15, 2018, at 10:30 AM, Western North Carolina poets Catherine Carter and Mary Ricketson will read at Coffee with the Poets and Writers at the Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson Street, Hayesville, NC. The reading is free and open to the public, and an open mic will follow the reading.

Born on the eastern shore of Maryland and raised there by wolves and vultures, Catherine Carter lives with her husband in Cullowhee, near Western Carolina University, where she teaches in the English Education and Professional Writing programs. Her full-length collections of poetry include The Swamp Monster at Home (LSU Press, 2012) The Memory of Gills (LSU, 2006), and Larvae of the Nearest Stars (forthcoming from LSU, fall 2019.  The Memory of Gills received the 2007 Roanoke-Chowan Award from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association; her chapbook Marks of the Witch won Jacar Press’ 2014 chapbook contest; other awards include the 2018 James Applewhite Poetry Award from the North Carolina Literary Review, the 2014 Poet Laureate’s award from the North Carolina Poetry Society, the 2013 poetry award from Still: The Journal, and numerous Pushcart nominations.  Her work has also appeared in Best American Poetry 2009, Orion, Poetry, Asheville Poetry Review, Tar River Review, and Ploughshares, among others; she is assistant poetry editor at Cider Press Review and the Jackson County regional representative for NCWN-West.Her website is:

 https://catherinecarterpoetry.com/

Mary Ricketson, Murphy NC, has been writing poetry 20 years. She is inspired by nature and her work as a mental health counselor.  Her poetry has been published in Wild Goose Poetry Review, Future Cycle Press, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Lights in the Mountains, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, Red Fox Run, It’s All Relative, Old Mountain Press, and Whispers. Poetry books include, her chapbook, I Hear the River Call my Name, and two full length poetry collections, Hanging Dog Creek, and Shade and Shelter. Mary won first place in the 2011 Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest 75th anniversary national poetry contest.

Currently Ricketson is using her own poetry to present empowerment workshops, combining roles as writer and her helping role as a therapist. Her poems and activities relate with nature, facilitate talk about a personal path and focus on growth in ordinary and unusual times.

Mary writes a monthly column, Women to Women, for The Cherokee Scout.  She is a Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor and an organic blueberry farmer.

Ricketson is Cherokee County representative to North Carolina Writers Network West, and president of Ridgeline Literary Alliance. 

CWPW is sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network-West, which is a program of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. For more information, please contact Glenda Beall at: 828-389-4447.

Catherine Carter has poems featured in Still: The Journal and Cold Mountain Review, plus a contract for a full-length poetry collection with LSU Press

Catherine Carter, a NCWN-West member, has three poems in Still: The Journal, this fall (http://www.stilljournal.net/catherine-carter-poetry2017.php), “Chickweed, Hens”, “Night Driving, Lighted Windows”, and “The Promise.” 

Cold Mountain Review will showcase  three of Carter's poems in this fall’s special issue on Extinction: “The Rapture”, “Copperheads in Heaven”, and “Crow Cosmogony.” "The Rapture" is nominated for a Pushcart Award.

LSU Press has awarded Carter a contract for her third full-length collection, Larvae of the Nearest Stars, to be published in Fall 2019.

Additionally, Carter is scheduled to be one of two featured poets at the NCPS Poetry Day at Lenoir-Rhyne in Hickory on April 21.