Robert Lee Kendrick Published with Main Street Rag

Writers’ Night Out had a good attendance tonight with participants from Atlanta area up to Hendersonville, NC. Although we can’t hold our face to face meetings, it is fun to get together online and share our writing.

Robert Lee Kendrick presented us with a most interesting program talking about his writing technique and answering my questions. His latest book Shape the Bent Straight was published by Main Street Rag Publishing company. It can be ordered from Scott Douglas at Main Street Rag or from Robert. 

He said he has a number of books on hand because he had planned to be doing readings and book signings at this time. To order from Robert, send him an email at robertleekendrick@gmail.com He will get your mailing address and you can send him a small fee plus shipping cost. It is well worth the effort and the fee. I plan to order tonight.

If you have not joined our Writers’ Night Out Zoom meeting on the second Friday of each month, be sure to Zoom with us October 9. The name of the guest presenter will be sent out with our invitation to all members of NCWN-West and to the mailing list of those who have attended WNO in the past.

The Open Mic readers are introduced and some conversation takes place with each of them. Join us in October.

Zoom along with Writers' Night Out!

 Robert Lee Kendrick 

in Conversation with Glenda Beall

Friday, September 11

7 pm

Open Mic Follows

NCWN members will received the Zoom link via email 

Join us for this month's Writers' Night Out featuring South Carolina poet, Robert Lee Kendrick. His third book, which is a novel in verse, is Shape the Bent Straight, recently published by Main Street Rag.  

Of Kendrick's first full-length collection, What Once Burst with Brilliance, former NC Poet Laureate, Joseph Bathanti, said, "These poems are achingly elegiac – a deep, unslaked yearn for a past not vanished but resurrected through the time-honored autobiographical ‘I’ of the eye-witness dutifully chained to memory. Kendrick’s poems are at once documentary and unforgettably imagined.”

Kendrick grew up in Illinois and Iowa, but now lives in Clemson with his wife and dog. After earning his M.A. from Illinois State University and his Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina, he held a number of jobs, ranging from house painter to pizza driver to grocery store worker to line cook. Main Street Rag also published his second poetry book Winter Skin. His poems appear in Birmingham Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Atlanta Review, Tar River Poetry, Louisiana Literature, and elsewhere. 

Open microphone will follow for those who’d like to read their own poetry or prose with a time limit of three minutes. 

Those wishing to participate in the open mic can sign up to read by emailing Glenda Beall, glendabeall@msn.com.

Zoom invitations will be sent out again to NCWN-West members before the event. For more information, please contact Glenda Beall.

Writers' Night Out Features Newton Smith & Robert Lee Kendrick

Our 2017 Season Opens on April 14 in Blairsville, GA

You're invited to hear poems from two Ph.D. poets who have new, highly acclaimed books: Newton Smith will read from his Camino Poems: Reflections on the Way, and Robert Lee Kendrick from his Winter Skin. After the featured readers, there's an open microphone for anyone wanting to share their own poems or prose. All this takes place at 7 pm on April 14 at the beautiful Union County Community Center. Please note, we will be meeting in a first floor conference room this month rather than the ballroom, and the grill will not be open for dinner until May.

Of the two books, celebrated North Carolina author, Ron Rash, says: “Newt Smith’s spiritual journey is rendered with such attentiveness and fidelity that we become his fellow travelers. We too share the pain and effort but above all the wonder, and are reminded that in matters of the spirit the journey and destination can be one,” and “Robert Lee Kendrick’s poems transport the reader into the deep, dark souls of his narrators, but the elegance of his language gives the poems a rough, hard-earned grace.”

Smith, who lives in Tuckasegee, NC, received his Ph.D. from University of North Carolina. He's the treasurer of NCWN-West and a retired professor who taught creative writing, poetry and literature at Western Carolina University. He has been published widely in literary magazines including Southern Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly, Ann Arbor Review, Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, and others. Smith now devotes his time to travel, gardening, Buddhist studies, mindfulness practices, and hiking in nature, especially in the Smoky Mountains. During his 2014 pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago he wrote a poem every day reflecting on the physical body, nature, and the spiritual.

Kendrick also has a Ph.D., earned from the University of South Carolina. He grew up in Illinois and Iowa, but now calls Clemson, South Carolina home, where he lives with his wife and their dogs. His poems have appeared in top journals, such as Tar River Poetry, Xavier Review, Louisiana Literature, South Carolina Review, The James Dickey Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Winter Skin, was released in 2016 by Main Street Rag Publishing.

Writers’ Night Out is a free monthly event, sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network-West. It takes place on the second Friday of the month, April through November. Open mic readers sign up at the door and can read for three minutes each. The Union County Community Center (map here) is located at Butternut Creek Golf Course at 129 Union County Recreation Rd., Blairsville, Georgia 30512, off Highway 129 near the intersection of US 76,  phone (706) 439-6092. Food is available for purchase in The View Grill, but please arrive by 6 pm to get served.  For more information, please contact Karen Holmes at (404) 316-8466 or kpaulholmes@gmail.com.