Literary Hour at John Campbell Folk School September 15

The North Carolina Writers’ Network-West’s Literary Hour will be held at the John C. Campbell Folk School on Thursday, September 15, 2022, at 7 p.m. The event will be held in the Open House. The Literary Hour is free and open to the public.

The featured writers for September are Karen Paul Holmes and Lorraine Bennett.

 

Karen Paul Holmes has published two poetry books, No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin, 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014). Her poems have been featured on The Writer's Almanac and The Slowdown. Publications include Diode, Valparaiso Review, Verse Daily, and Prairie Schooner. Holmes founded the Side Door Poets in Atlanta, which she still hosts. She also started Writers' Night Out for the North Carolina Writers’ Network-West, which is now in its twelfth year. Held via Zoom on the second Friday of the month, Writers’ Night Out is hosted by Holmes and Glenda Beall. She also teaches periodically at the John C. Campbell Folk School. She will read mostly new poems at the Literary Hour as well as a short selection from No Such Thing as Distance.

 

Lorraine Martin Bennett is a print, web, and broadcast journalist who grew up in Murphy, North Carolina. She graduated from Murphy High School and UNC Chapel Hill. She has been a journalist with the Atlanta Journal where she met her late husband, Tom, a columnist for the Cherokee Scout. She also wrote for the Los Angeles Times and became the newspaper’s first woman to head a domestic bureau. She joined fledgling CNN as a news writer, becoming copy editor, producer, and editorial manager before ending her television career at CNN International. In retirement, she writes essays, short stories, flash fiction, poetry and still practices her craft by copy editing and occasionally writing articles for the Clay County Progress. Her essays have appeared in the Personal Story Publishing Project (Daniel Boone Footsteps, Winston-Salem) for the past two years, with another coming out soon. Her first novel, Cat on a Black Moon, a psychological thriller, will be published by Austin Macauley (London, Cambridge, New York) later this year. She will read the first two chapters from her new book.

 

The Literary Hour will be held on the third Thursday of the month through November at John C. Campbell Folk School in the roofed and open pavilion of the Open House. From Clays Corner in Brasstown turn onto Brasstown Road, then turn left on Scoggins Road then left again to pass Davidson Hall. Or coming from Marsh Creek, turn right onto Davidson Road and follow around to Open House. Parking is in front near the vegetable gardens.

 Anyone with a love of the written word will be transported by the talent of the featured writers. Contact Patricia Zick at pczick23@gmail.com for further information

Literary Hour Returns to John C. Campbell Folk School

The North Carolina Writers’ Network-West’s Literary Hour returns to the John C.Campbell Folk School on Thursday, August 18, 2022, at 7 p.m., after a two-year hiatus during the pandemic. The event will be held in the Open House. The Literary Hour is free and open to the public.

The featured writers for August are Brenda Kay Ledford and Glenda Beall.

Brenda Kay Ledford

 Brenda Kay Ledford, a seventh-generational native of Clay County, North Carolina, is an award-winning author, blogger, and retired educator. Her work has appeared in many journals including Asheville Poetry Review, Our State, Appalachian Heritage, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Guidepost Magazine, 49 Old Mountain Press anthologies, and many other publications. She writes about nature and wants to help preserve the culture of this region. She's received the Paul Green Multimedia Award from North Carolina Society of Historians thirteen times for her books. Ledford will read poetry from her latest book, Blanche, Poetry of a Blue Ridge Woman, which was released by Redhawk Publishing in 2021.

Glenda Council Beall

Glenda Beall serves as program coordinator for the North Carolina Writers’ Network-West. Her essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in magazines and literary journals as well as online. Her poetry chapbook, Now Might as Well be Then, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2009. She has co-authored a collection of stories, poems, and essays Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers and Fins, Family Pets and God’s Other Creatures. 

Much of her writing is filled with stories about horses, dogs, and cats that have been a part of her family. Her love of genealogy led her to compile stories of her grandfather and his ten children in Profiles and Pedigrees, The Descendants of Thomas Charles Council (1858 – 1911). Beall’s online classes, Writers Circle around the Table, and classes for the Institute of Continuing Learning reach people from all over the country. She will read her creative non-fiction as well as short stories.

 The Literary Hour will be held on the third Thursday of the month through November at John C. Campbell Folk School in the roofed and open pavilion of the Open House. From Clays Corner in Brasstown turn onto Brasstown Road, then turn left on Scoggins Road then left again to pass Davidson Hall. Or coming from Marsh Creek, turn right onto Davidson Road and follow around to Open House. Parking is in front near the vegetable gardens.

 Anyone with a love of the written word will be transported by the talent of each month’s featured writers. Contact Patricia Zick at pczick23@gmail.com for further information.

Patricia Zick

New Cherokee County Rep, Pat Zick

 We are happy to welcome Pat Zick, author and editor, as the new Cherokee County Representative for NCWN-West. Soon members in that county will be receiving emails as Pat reaches out to meet you all and have you get to know her. Our county reps are a very important part of NCWN-West leadership.

Pat is a highly published writer and manuscript doctor.  Visit her website to learn more about her.

Wow, she has been a busy writer. Check out her fiction titles and where you can find them.

During the past couple of years of the pandemic, Pat has worked with narrators to produce her romance novels as audible books. 

We will post more about Pat and her plans for writers in Cherokee County North Carolina in the coming weeks.

Congratulations, Pat, and I look forward to working with you.

A Road Map for Writers

A book is out that we all want to read.

The Author's Journey: A Road Map for Writers - From Draft to Published Book 

Pat Zick,novelist and part time resident of Murphy, NC has published the book we need to read if we want to publish a successful book. She writes as P.C. Zick and is a member of NCWN-West.

Find this book here now.

About P.C. Zick

Bestselling author P.C. Zick describes herself as a storyteller no matter what she writes. And she writes in a variety of genres, including romance, contemporary fiction, and creative nonfiction. She's won various awards for her essays, columns, editorials, articles, and novels.
Pat says she hopes to be back in the mountains before too long, but for now she is self-quarantined in her home in Tallahassee, Florida. She was scheduled to teach a publishing class at the Moss Library in Hayesville in June, but she is now thinking about teaching the class on Zoom. We hope she will teach  even if from her home.

Want to be a better writer?

March 26 - Carol Crawford - instructor

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.
Fee: $40

April 23 - Catherine Carter

Description:

Bracket and Hinge: Strengthening Poems’ Sonic Level. In this 2-hour lecture/workshop, Catherine Carter will use contemporary poems to discuss a few of the ways in which a poem can be built around the sounds of single words, model one possible process for revising a poem in this way, and encourage participants to do this with their own works. Participants should bring hard copy of one or two of their own short poems to work on.
Fee: $40

June 25 - Patricia Zick

Patricia Zick's workshop, "The Road to Publishing" will explore the different choices for publishing a book. Then she will delve into the step-by-step process for self-publishing a work of nonfiction or fiction using Amazon’s publishing platform. Ms. Zick, the author of twenty-five published books in a variety of genres, will demonstrate how to prepare a manuscript, provide definitions for publishing jargon, and walk through the process for uploading a book for both Kindle and paperback publication to the online retail site. 

Fee: $40

Registration must be made ten days before class date.
Contact glendabeall@msn.com
Send check, $40.00, made to NCWN West 
Mail to: PO Box 843, Hayesville, NC 28904