Join thousands who attend the Festival on the Square in Hayesville, NC July 8,9,10

 FESTIVAL ON THE SQUARE is a weekend celebration of mountain crafts, mountain music, and food. On July 8, Friday afternoon, Jim Davis and Knute Rarey, members of NCWN-West will set up a tent canopy, tables, and chairs on a 10 x 10 plot reserved for our use on the square in beautiful Hayesville, NC. We are the only group representing literary arts at this event. The mountain writers west of Asheville and in bordering counties of Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee make up the membership of NCWN-West. The remaining copies of Echoes Across the Blue Ridge will be on sale at a discount. This anthology of western NC writers dedicated to Byron Herbert Reece includes poems and stories by some of the best writers in the Appalachian Mountains area.

Saturday morning at 10 AM, three of our members will staff the booth. They will meet and talk to anyone who comes by to say hello. They are authors of books that will be available for purchase. On the tables will be brochures that explain what we are and who we are. These authors will answer questions about how to join NCWN-west and what new members can expect to have offered them. 

Our purpose for being there is to expose writers and readers to what local writers have written and have on sale. This tri-state area is brimming with very good writers and poets, published and unpublished.

We are also there to introduce our professional organization to anyone who is interested. Often people don't realize that NCWN-West is welcoming and wants to embrace new writers and help them follow their dreams. A number of our members found NCWN-West at the Festival on the Square. Carroll Taylor, author and poet, as well as Marcia Barnes, author, columnist, and poet discovered this organization while at the festival and now both are in leadership positions helping others and publishing their work.

This annual festival has been ongoing for forty-one years and is sponsored by the Clay County Historical and Arts Council which is supported by the NC Arts Association. There is no charge to attend and the vendors open up at 10 AM on Saturday and on Sunday.  Mountain music entertainers will be on stage in the Gazebo on both days.

Pat Zick, author

NCWN-West will hold drawings to give away books and other writerly things several times each day. To register, write your name on a strip of paper with your phone number and email address. Drop it in the large bowl on the table in the booth. You will be called if your name is drawn. If you are not still at the festival, we will make arrangements to get the gift bag to you.

Joan Howard, poet

On Saturday you will find Carroll Taylor, Lorraine Bennett, Marcia Barnes, and Brenda Kay Ledford in the booth. Saturday afternoon Glenda Beall, Pat Zick, and Gene Vickers will be there to greet you.

Lorraine Bennett, author

Sunday CarolLynn Jones and Joan Howard will sit at the table throughout the morning. Raven Chiong and Sandy Benson, will sit in for an hour. Pat Zick and Glenda Beall will be there in the afternoon with David Plunkett. 

 We invite you to come to the festival for a good time and be sure to stop by the NCWN West Writers Booth. Sign up for a free gift. 

Carroll Taylor

   

Brenda Kay
Ledford

Marcia Barnes

                                                 

                                                                                                             Gene Vickers, author

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Photos from Festival on the Square in Hayesville, NC

Deanna Klingel, Valerie Nieman, Joan Ellen Gage, Eva Mull Wike, Miriam Jones Bradley 

It was hot but we had fun and folks went home with books from our authors. NC Writers' Network West, a program of the North Carolina Writers' Network, sponsored this booth and volunteers staffed it both Saturday and Sunday. We handed out information about local events, registration for membership, and gave information about the Fall Conference in November in Asheville. We talked to people about NCWN, the state writers' group. www.ncwriters.org and gave away books twice each day of the festival. 

Val Nieman joins Joan Ellen Gage at the book table Sunday afternoon. 

Valerie Nieman, Joan Gage, and Glenda Beall 

The North Carolina Writers' Network 2014 Fall Conference

The North Carolina Writers' Network 2014 Fall Conference will be held November 21-23 at the Sheraton Charlotte Hotel, in Uptown Charlotte. If you've already registered: thank you! If not, can you really miss an opportunity like this, happening in your own backyard?

The North Carolina Writers' Network 2014 Fall Conference offers something for almost every writer, at any level of skill or experience. Your best route to getting the most out of the weekend depends on where you are right now as a writer, where you want to go as a writer, and how you want to get from here to there.

Are you a NOVICE writer? Good workshop options for newbies include Chantel Acevedo’s “All Shapes and Sizes: A Workshop on Novel Structure”; “Poetry 101” with Anthony S. Abbott; and “First Impressions in the First Few Pages” with Sarah Creech.

Are you an EMERGING writer? You may want to mix some of the craft workshops—maybe “Poetry and Time” with Julie Funderburk; “Making Their Stories Your Own” with Rebecca McClanahan; or Zelda Lockhart’s “The Mirror Exercise: Producing a Whole Short Work in Less Than an Hour”—with some of the appropriate business-of-writing workshops like Sunday’s panel discussion on “The Many Paths to Publication” with Kim Boykin, John Hartness, and Karon Luddy.

Are you an EXPERIENCED writer? You may be ready to concentrate on the “business of writing” workshops: “The Art of the Pitch” with Betsy Thorpe and Carin Siegfried; “Crafting Your Message: Beginning an Interactive Publicity Campaign” with Priscilla Goudreau-Santos; “The Many Paths to Publication” panel discussion; maybe even “Creating a Poetry Community” with Scott Owens and Jonathan K. Rice.

And if you're an AUTHOR, well, why not register for the conference just to brag? And of course to enjoy the keynote address by Allan Gurganus; Saturday's luncheon featuring North Carolina's seventh poet laureate, Joseph Bathanti; and Saturday night's annual banquet featuring the inimitable Wilton Barnhardt.

The North Carolina Writers' Network Fall Conference changes locations each year, in order to better serve the writers of this state. We won't be back in Charlotte until 2018, at the earliest. We don't want to wait that long to see you.

Register now.

Why should authors participate in book festivals?

At the risk of stating the obvious, if a book is to sell, the author needs to effectively promote it.
The question is how and where to do it. Does one hit the road and make individual appearances at book stores and coffee shops? Even a recognized author may find ten people in the audience and sell only a couple of books.
The disappointed author may have driven many miles and spent money on food and a motel. The host of the book-signing event offers all the usual excuses. "We don't know why people did not show up. We had a poster on the bulletin board for weeks and told lots of people about your coming."

There is an alternative to individual book-signing tours.
An author can participate in a book festival and share the large stage with dozens of other authors? Perhaps a shared stage is better than a tiny, empty one. There is the related opportunity to meet editors, reviewers, publishers and other authors making  it an enriching experience. Writers can attend free presentations on a variety of things like marketing, e-books trends and the effective use of industry professionals.  Mix with and talk to readers to see what they are reading and how they discover what they read. Ask questions that can guide both your writing and the most effective ways you can promote it.
There are about six active book festivals across North Carolina and others in adjacent states.  The closest to those living in western NC is the Blue Ridge Bookfest.

Fifth Annual Blue Ridge Bookfest

Your friends at the 5th annual Blue Ridge Bookfest invite you to attend on May 17 and 18, 2013 in the Technology Building on the Blue Ridge Community College campus in Flat Rock/ Hendersonville, North Carolina. Visit our website www.BlueRidgeBookfest.org and click on "Contact Us" to sign-up for our newsletter. Interested authors can request a table at a future festival by clicking on the drop down menu "Interested In".

Consider coming this year even if you are not exhibiting your latest book. Or you could just stay home and wonder why your books are not selling and why your writing is becoming more a task than a joy. What fun is writing if nobody seems to be reading what you write? Come play in our writer's sandbox; our book festival.


Bill Ramsey

Blue Ridge Bookfest May 18 - 19 Flat Rock,NC

Bill Ramsey wants to remind you all that the Blue Ridge Bookfest will have lots of authors, books and interesting presentations for the two day event.

The 2012 Honoree, Elizabeth Kostova will be feted at 6:30 on Friday evening, May 18th, immediately after the Bookfest's opening reception. Rob Neufeld will emcee a discussion with Kostova about her novels and experiences as a writer at that time.
I really enjoyed Rob's interview with the honored author at last year's bookfest. He does a great job and he even went out into the audience to get questions from those who raised their hands.

Readers who can't make it to these events on Friday are encouraged to attend a second talk by Ms. Kostova on Saturday, May 19th, afternoon at 1:00 PM. Both her vivid prose and her ties to the area make this a do not miss event.


During the two day event, over forty authors will be making presentations, meeting attendees, and autographing books. Mark your calendars and come join us for this wonderful weekend devoted to the art of writing and the joy of reading.

If you can make to to Flat Rock Community College near Hendersonville, NC, be sure to take advantage of this event.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Workshops starting at 1:30 PM

Honoree's Address by Elizabeth Kostova at 6:30 PM

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Doors open at 8:00 AM

Author Presentations (8:45 AM - 3:00 PM)

Blue Ridge Conference Hall

Blue Ridge Community College Campus

Flat Rock, NC

Visit the website for driving directions.

http://www.blueridgebookfest.org/

Contact Bill Ramsey with questions.l


Bill Ramsey
2012 Bookfest Chair
http://www.blueridgebookfest.org/

828-698-1022

Lady Banks tells the news

We think you'd enjoy reading up on what is happening in the world of southern writers, book stores, poets and poetry, and commonplace books. Her ladyship, provides much of interest for the literary world, especially in the south.

Great recipe for Black-eyed peas and ham soup - that is a surprise, but a good one.



http://www.authorsroundthesouth.com/lady-banks

Charles Price visited Hayesville and signed books

Charles Price is the author of the “Hiawassee” series, four works of historical fiction set in his native Western North Carolina. His novel “Freedom’s Altar” won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award. “The Cock’s Spur” received an Independent Publisher Book Award as one of the Ten Outstanding Books of 2001 and also won the Historical Fiction Award of the North Carolina Society of Historians.

We found Price set up in Crumpets Dessertery inside Phillips and Lloyd Book store in Hayesville, NC with a host of family around him on Saturday afternoon. His latest novel, Nor the Battle to the Strong: A Novel of the American Revolution in the South was stacked on the table before him. Customers from the Festival on the Square were filing in and out of the book store. I suspect many of them stumbled upon Charles Price when they came in to escape the heat on the town square which was packed with tents and tables for crafts.

Price, a native of Clay County, is popular in the area. Elizabeth and Joe Rybicki said he is a delightful person and we found him to be friendly and talkative. We brought in our visitors from south Georgia. They bought Hiawassee for their son, a Civil War buff, and enjoyed conversation with the author as he told us about the cover shot that graces his new hardback book. It was a perfect choice and, since covers often sell books, we imagine the close-up shot of a soldier's boot in the stirrup on horseback intriqued many readers to take a closer look.

When asked if he might come to the area and teach a workshop for Netwest, Charles Price said he no longer teaches. Too bad. He is one of the more succesful writers from this area.

His novel, “Where the Water-Dogs Laughed,” was a first finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award for Historical Fiction. Price was a Washington lobbyist, management consultant, urban planner and journalist before returning to North Carolina to be a full-time writer. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from UNC Chapel Hill.