New Poet Laureate of Georgia, Chelsea Rathburn

Congratulations to Chelsea Rathburn. She is a professor at Young Harris College, where she directs the creative writing program. She has just been named Poet Laureate of Georgia. 

Chelsea Rathburn, new Poet Laureate of Georgia

What an honor! She is following in the footsteps of Betty Sellers, the fabulous poet who was professor of English at YHC decades ago. She was also named Poet Laureate of Georgia. Sellers was author of numerous books of poetry and was best known for her poems about life in southern Appalachia. 

Chelsea Rathburn is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently Still Life with Mother and Knife, a New York Times “New & Noteworthy” book released by Louisiana State University Press in February 2019. Rathburn’s first full-length collection, The Shifting Line, won the 2005 Richard Wilbur Award, and her second collection, A Raft of Grief, was published by Autumn House Press in 2013.

Rathburn’s poems have appeared in the nation’s most esteemed journals, including Poetry, The Atlantic Monthly, the New Republic, The Southern Review, New England Review, and Ploughshares, among others.While she was born in Jacksonville and raised in Miami, Florida, Rathburn has deep roots in the state of Georgia, where her mother’s family has lived since the 1830s.

Rathburn moved to Decatur, Georgia in 2001 after completing graduate school at the University of Arkansas. Since 2013, she has lived in the North Georgia mountains with her husband, the poet James Davis May, and their daughter.


Chelsea Rathburn will be a featured guest at Writers Night Out in Blairsville, Georgia April 12, 2019. Karen Holmes is host and NCWN-West is sponsor of this event open to the public. For more info: kpaulholmes AT gmail DOT com

Writers Karen Salyer McElmurray and Maryn McKenna to read and lecture at Young Harris College, Young Harris, GA, March 13, and April 5, 2018

Two talented writers who will be on the YHC campus in March and April. Both are free and open to the public.

Karen Salyer McElmurray will deliver the 2018 Heinze Lecture at YHC this year in Wilson Lecture Hall on March 13, 2018 at 6:30 pm. She will read from both her creative nonfiction work and new fiction. McElmurray's work is set in Appalachia and looks critically at the challenges of living in, leaving, and returning to the region as well as the beauty and worth of such journeys. Her language is lyrical and her honesty piercing. You will not be disappointed in spending an hour with her! Please come if you are able! And share with any in our community that might be interested.

Journalist and author Maryn McKenna will give a lecture at YHC on Thursday, April 5th at 7 p.m. in the Hatcher Room, Rollins Campus Center. McKenna's most recent book, Big Chicken, tracks the evolution of poultry farming and discusses the dangers of the industry's use of antibiotics. New York Times columnist Mark Bittman calls the book "A must-read for anyone who cares about the quality of food and the welfare of animals." Big Chicken also has local ties, as nearby Gainesville, Georgia, plays a central role.

Check www.yhc.edu for further details.

NCWN-West's Program Coordinator, Glenda Council Beall to teach writing classes this spring at Tri-County Community College and Young Harris College's Institute for Continuing Learning

Glenda Council Beall will teach writing classes this spring at two colleges.

Beall will teach on Monday evenings beginning in March 2018, from 5:30 – 8:00 PM, at Tri-County Community College in Murphy, NC. Her topic is Creative Writing. Beall writes: Perhaps you want to write about yourself or people you know, places you have been or family history. Perhaps you have always had stories wandering around in your brain and you want to write fiction. Poetry? Prose? Not sure? Your questions will be answered to help you discover your writing niche. This class is for new or aspiring writers. To register, please contact:
 
Lisa Long
Director of Community Outreach
(828) 835-4241
LLong@tricountycc.edu


Beall will also teach at Young Harris College's Institute for Continuing  Learning , beginning in May, the 3rd-24th, 2018, Thursdays from 3:15-5:15 PM.  Registration is made through ICL. More information will  be available as the class gets closer. Institute for Continuing Learning's link is:

http://icltest.org/index.html

Novelist Charles Baxter to read at Young Harris College on Tuesday, October 10, 2017,

Acclaimed novelist Charles Baxter will read at Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia, on Tuesday, October 10,2017, at 7 p.m. in the Rollins Campus Center. The reading is free and open to the public. Baxter is the author of five novels, including the best-seller The Feast of Love, which was named a finalist for the National Book Award, as well as the short story collection There’s Something I Want You to Do, which the New York Times Book Review dubbed “winning and ingenious.” Baxter, who teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Minnesota, has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

 
https://www.yhc.edu/about/news-media/events

Upcoming Events

Book Festival in Atlanta is Worth the Trip


Labor Day Weekend: Karen Paul Holmes and many other poets and authors will appear at the largest independent book festival in the country. September 2-4. Full schedule is here: Decatur Book Festival








Writers' Night Out: Jim May To Read from His New Book

Friday, Sept. 9: Young Harris College professors, Chelsea Rathburn and James May, will read their award-winning poems at Writers' Night Out at 7 pm. at the Union County Community Center in Blairsville, GA.

The married couple are both well-published poets who moved to the area from Atlanta to teach English and creative writing at Young Harris College in 2013. Social hour begins at 6 p.m. (dinner available for purchase upstairs in The View Grill but please arrive no later than 6) with the reading at 7 p.m. in the ballroom. An open microphone follows for those who’d like to showcase their own writing.

Rathburn is author of two full-length poetry collections, A Raft of Grief (Autumn House Press, 2013) and The Shifting Line, winner of the 2005 Richard Wilbur Award, as well as a poetry chapbook, Unused Lines (Aralia Press, 2004). Her poems have appeared in many prestigious journals such as The Atlantic, Poetry, The New Republic, The Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, and New England Review, and her prose has appeared in Creative Nonfiction. In 2009, she received a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She directs the creative writing program at YHC.

May is the author of Unquiet Things (Louisiana State University Press, 2016).  The winner of the Poetry Society of America’s Cecil Hemley Memorial Award in 2016, his poems have appeared in The Missouri Review, New England Review, New Ohio Review, The New Republic, Rattle, The Southern Review and elsewhere. The former editor of New South, he has received scholarships from The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Inprint, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar. In 2013, he won the Collins Award from Birmingham Poetry Review.

Poet Maurice Manning to Present Annual Heinze Lecture at Young Harris College, Thursday, March 31, 2016, 7:00 PM

YOUNG HARRIS, Ga. – American Poet Maurice Manning will present the annual Heinze Lecture at Young Harris College on Thursday, March 31, at 7 p.m. in Wilson Lecture Hall of Goolsby Center on the YHC campus. The event is free and open to the public. During the lecture, Manning will discuss the cultural and literary heritage of Appalachia as well as read from his own works.

Manning was born and raised in Kentucky, and often writes about the land and culture of his home. His first book of poems, “Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions,” was chosen by poet and judge W.S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. His subsequent books include “A Companion for Owls: Being the Commonplace Book of D. Boone, Lone Hunter, Back Woodsman, &c.,” “Bucolics,” “The Common Man,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and “The Gone and the Going Away.”

He grew up listening to stories of his father’s childhood spent on a farm in Eastern Kentucky and has been inspired by the lives of his grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and a great-great-grandmother. Inventive and historical, his work reflects his heritage and a respect for the natural world.

Manning received fellowships from the Fine Art Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., and the Guggenheim Foundation. He has taught at DePauw University and Indiana University, and is on faculty in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College and the Sewanee Writing Conference. He is currently a professor of English at Transylvania University.

Established in 1974 in memory of YHC alumnus James R. Heinze, the annual Heinze Lecture brings speakers to campus to discuss themes and ideas that encourage college spirit and offer inspiration to the entire college community. Traditionally, the lecture focuses on Southern or Appalachian topics.

For more information about this event, call (706) 379-5104.
 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/maurice-manning

Poet John Hoppenthaler will be reading at Young Harris College, Young Harris, Georgia, Monday, November 16, 7:00 PM

Writers and lovers of the written word, note that Poet John Hoppenthaler will be at Young Harris College, Monday, November 16, 7:00 PM, in the Hatcher Room, Rollins Campus Center, Young Harris College, 1 College St, Young Harris, GA 30582..

The event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.

John Hoppenthaler's first book of poems is Lives of Water (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2003). His poetry appears in Ploughshares, Southern Review, Pleiades, 5 AM, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney's, Barrow Street, and elsewhere; his essays, interviews, and reviews in Arts&Letters, Southern Review, Chelsea, Bellingham Review, and the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Poetry Editor of Kestrel, he teaches at East Carolina University in Greenville.
Here's a link to some of John's poems:http://www.versedaily.org/2008/aboutjohnhoppenthaleratcr.shtml