Video Links for Nancy Simpson Celebration, held May 5, 2018, at the John C. Campbell Folk School

Left to right, Glenda Beall, Jeremy Brantley, Lynn Rutherford, Yan Yang Brantley, and Janice Moore

The Nancy Simpson Celebration was a success. Many noted authors spoke and read, most from Simpson's books. Some read poems they had written for Nancy.

Readers included:

Shelby Stephenson, Poet Laureate of NC, Steve Harvey, Debbie McGill, Janice Moore, Brenda Kay Ledford, Karen Paul Holmes, Mary Ricketson, Rosemary Rhodes Royston,Glenda Barrett, Joan Ellen Gage, and Glenda Council Beall.

Glenda Council Beall led the Celebration as Emcee. Here are video links from the Celebration, (taken by Yan Yang Brantley), note, they are not in order:

Video #1: Glenda Beall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RcgwO3o2GQ&t=23s

Video #2: Steve Harvey
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfrWt50mo7M&t=34s

Video #3: Debbie McGill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvXs0d_nG0c

Video #4: Brenda Kay Ledford
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqKLDIYIZHg&t=11s

Video #5: Mary Ricketson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cm9BsMSvSw

Video #6: Rosemary R. Royston
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNVqLYQGmzc

Video #7: Glenda Barrett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DplMSmvYRIg

Video #8: Joan Ellen Gage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=betjBuWuYYI

Video #9: Glenda Beall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-wjt4bP28

Video #10: Shelby Stephenson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ8_GYXPKKw

Video #12: Janice Moore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pDR0hXx6hk

Photos will follow at a later date.

Dr. Steven Harvey, author of The Book of Knowledge and Wonder, talks about writing the story of his mother's suicide.

Steven Harvey is the author of three books of personal essays. A Geometry of Lilies, Lost in Translation, and Bound for Shady Grove. He has also edited an anthology of essays written by men on middle age called In a Dark Wood. His memoir The Book of Knowledge and Wonder, which has him exploring his mother's suicide when he was eleven, was recently published by Ovenbird Books. I appreciate him giving his time to answer a few questions for this interview. 

GCB: Steve, I’ve known you for more than twenty years and always admired your writing and your teaching. You were a poet and you are an essayist. How was writing a memoir different from writing your other books?

STEVE: All of my writing has a personal component, but the memoir required a different kind of digging. Armed with only a few vivid memories of my childhood, I was asking myself to reconstruct a past. I did have more than four hundred letters that covered all but the last year of the book, but they served primarily as a mnemonic evoking images, thoughts, memories, and events that I had not thought about in years.

Read more:  here

Steven Harvey Class, The Mnemonics of Memoir, June 27, 10 AM–1 PM, Hayesville, NC

Steven Harvey, Instructor

Memory coming to us as a strange concoction of thought and dream is the source of memoir, personal essays, and other forms of creative nonfiction. Some memories come unbidden, others emerge in the writing process, and some reluctant ones need to be teased out.


What tools can the writer use to access these memories, even the shy ones, and see them vividly enough and in enough detail to use in a memoir or essay? In this class we will begin by looking at a range of techniques that can be used to access memories.


Then, through a series of exercises, we will apply a number of these techniques to a single memory to enrich our experience of it. Finally, we will offer suggestions to use these techniques, in our writing, to make our personal texts more powerful.
Students should bring paper and a pen even if they plan to use a computer to write. Interested parties should contact Glenda C. Beall, at Hayesville, NC.

glendabeall@msn.com

Blue Ridge Writers Conference 08

Congratulations to Carol Crawford and the Blue Ridge Mountain Arts Association for another inspiring Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference this weekend. A number of Netwest members were present and heard fiction writer, Joshilyn Jackson,author of three novels including The Girl who Stopped Swimming and Between Georgia. Registrants filled both her sessions after her keynote address. Joshilyn gave a hilarious imitation of her agent, and she impressed us with her savvy about the publishing world. She said it is easier to publish traditionally than to self publish and have all the work of selling your book.

Steven Harvey, author of Geometry of Lilies and Bound for Shady Grove, two books I enjoyed, spoke about my favorite subject, writing memoir. I was happy to hear him reiterate many of the points I use in teaching my classes. Although he says he could never have made a living as a stand up comedian, and he has to steal the funny things he includes in his books, Steve often brought smiles to our faces today. He leads a relaxed workshop with audience input.

Jim Smith, poet, came home to his native land from down in Savannah where he is Associate Editor of Southern Poetry Review. I was fortunate to attend a session where Steve Harvey and Jim discussed imagery in verses from past issues of SPR. Nancy Simpson says Steve took Jim under his wing when Jim was a young man at Young Harris College. It is obvious Steve is proud of Jim’s success. Jim Smith was one of the presenters at Netwest’s Lights in the Mountains Conference in Hayesville in 2006. Wish he would visit our Poetry Critique Group sometime when he is in town