Poet Nancy Simpson (Brantley) Presented with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award by Marquis Who’s Who

HAYESVILLE, NC, January 04, 2018 — Marquis Who's Who, the world's premier publisher of biographical profiles, is proud to present Nancy Simpson Brantley with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.

She celebrates many years' experience in her field and has been noted for achievements, leadership qualities, and the credentials and successes she has accrued in her field. As in all Marquis Who's Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.

Nancy Simpson Brantley has held a BS in Education from Western Carolina University since 1978, and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Warren Wilson College since 1983. A recipient of the North Carolina Arts Fellowship from 1991 to 1992, she has been included in several editions of Who's Who in America, Who's Who in American Education, Who's Who in the South and Southwest, and Who's Who of American Women. She was married for 20 years to E.W. Brantley, Jr. and she is the proud mother of three sons.

A long time English educator and poet, Nancy Simpson Brantley formerly spent 26 years teaching in the exceptional children's programs in the Clay County School District in North Carolina. Retiring in 2001, she simultaneously spent 14 years as an instructor of creative writing at the Tri-County Community College from 1989 to 2003, in Murphy, NC. Balancing two significant careers, she was able to teach what she loved. She taught poetry part-time at the Institute for Continued Learning at Young Harris College, a liberal arts school in northeast Georgia. She also taught creative writing in the middle school grades and taught English composition and American Literature at Hayesville High School. For 15 years she was employed part-time as a Resident Writer at John C. Campbell Folk School where her job was to schedule all the writing classes. She also taught Poetry and Historical Novel. She was also a guest poet at Western Carolina University, Brevard College, East Tennessee State University, and State University of New York. She was active within the North Carolina Arts Council in Clay County, NC. In 1991, she co-founded An Evening of Art and Poetry with Reba Beck. Special judges were brought in and winners were awarded prize money.

She was an active member of the North Carolina Writers' Network since its inception in 1985 and served on the Executive Board. In 1991 she co-founded the North Carolina Writers' Network West, a program to serve writers in the remote areas of the North Carolina mountains. She served as program coordinator for 10 years.

All of Nancy Simpson Brantley's writing has been published under her given name Nancy Simpson. Across Water, State Street Press, Judith Kitchens publisher was published in 1983. Night Student, State Street Press, was published in 1985. Nancy Simpson authored the book Living Above the Frost Line, New and Selected Poems, chosen by Kathryn Stripling Byer for the first collection in the first book in the Poet Laureate Series, Carolina Wren Press, Durham, NC in 2010. Ms. Simpson and Shirley Uphouse co-edited Lights in the Mountains: Stories, Essays and Poems by Writers Living in and Inspired by the Southern Appalachian Mountains, Winding Path Publishing, 2010 with an introduction by Fred Chappell in 2003. Ms. Simpson also served as editor of Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, an anthology released in 2010 with an introduction by Robert Morgan.
She authored numerous poems which have been included in literary publications such as the Prairie Schooner, Georgia Review, and the Southern Poetry Review. Some were reprinted upon request in anthologies such as The Poet's Guide to the Birds edited by Ted Kooser, Word and Wisdom – 100 Years of North Carolina Poetry, and also 7 poems were reprinted in a textbook of Appalachian poets published by McFarland Press, and Don't Leave Hungry – Southern Poetry Review's 50th Anniversary issue.

In recognition of her outstanding contributions to her profession and the Marquis Who's Who community, Nancy Simpson Brantley has been featured on the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement website. Please visit www.ltachievers.com for more information about this honor.
About Marquis Who's Who :

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Henderson County Open Mic Night features poet Kimberly Sims; event is changed to January 22, 2018, due to the MLK holiday

Subject: Open Mic Night date change and guest reader 

Dear Writing Friends, 

As I announced at our last meeting, because of Martin Luther King Day, the library will be closed on January 15, which is the 3rd Monday of the month, so we will be having our open mic night, same time, same place, on the following Monday, January, 22. 

Open mic sign up will begin as usual at 5:30 pm. Then, we will have a special reading by Kimberly Simms, who was the poet-in-residence at Carl Sandburg house a couple of years ago. She will be reading from her new book that was featured in an article by Bold Life magazine--Lindy Lee: Songs on Mill Hill. Here is a link to the article: http://www.boldlife.com/threading-life-work/#comment-6897

Following the reading will be our regular open mic readings--3 minutes for poetry and 5 for prose. We will need to adhere more strictly to the time limit this month, so please read over your selection several times and be sure it adheres to the time limit. 

Hope to see you at our special evening to start off a year of Henderson County's Literary Open Mic Nights--a function of the North Carolina Writers' Network-West. 

Katie Winkler

Co-Representative,

NCWN-West, Henderson County

The Ashes Are Falling by William Everett

I am re-posting this blog post by William Everett. He is a member of NCWN-West and writes an interesting blog each week. He is author of fiction and nonfiction and is also, a poet. I think you will like it.

Posted on December 27, 2017 by William Everett

Living in one of the world’s great temperate hardwood forests, I become familiar with the trees around me. Not all, by any means, because we have such an expanse of species, but I do know those that can be transformed into the bowls, turnings, cabinetry, and sculpted artifacts that release their beauty and strength into our realm of use or beauty. Trees talk to each other, support each other in the wind, share their resources, and dance their seasons of green, gold, red, grey, and brown. Some became old friends whose signs of age raise our concern, whose loss of limb or crown distress us, or whose seedlings volunteer to fill the spaces left by those long gone.

Over the centuries, they have adapted to their environment and the slow epochal changes of ice ages and hot or humid times. They live at an evolutionary pace. But we humans have dragged them into the faster tempo of our history. As we have spread across the globe, we have brought sicknesses and parasites that have overcome their natural resistance. The chestnut blight from China reduced the mighty chestnut to struggling sprouts among the stumps that testify to their former glory. The Dutch elm disease took down those stately witnesses to our streets and parks. The wooly adelgid decimated our balsams. The hemlock adelgid is still making its way through the moist coves and stream beds of these mountains. And now the emerald ash borer has made its way to us from Michigan, where it arrived from Asia in some wooden pallets. Sometimes, given time, the trees can stimulate their own resistance, but other times we lose them entirely, except for specimens in labs and arboretums.

We identify with these trees. They inspire us with their strength. patience, and endurance. Tended well, they supply us with things of use and beauty. This winter we will have to cut down one of our friends, whom the borer is reducing to a skeleton. I share with you my lament as we watch its demise, among many others, and hope that some of it can find its way into a new life.

My ash trees are dying,

            their leaves are faces of grief,

            they are weeping bark,

            my saw is chewing them into firewood,

            they are rendered into ashes in our stove,

            I am turning their limbs into plates and bowls,

            their trunks into table legs and planks..

The emerald beetle eating out their life

            rings their trunks with burrows for its larva,

            girdling them with living death.

The borers will move on,

            the ash their only home.

They do not know

            of baseball bats and tables,

            rakes and chairs and hoes.

They eat,

            lay eggs,

            hatch,

            and leave destruction in their wake.

Why do I stand among the ashes in amazement?

Did we not bring these predators?

Is our destruction not the same?

Will there be survivors

            who will weep for me?

Thank you, Bill, for allowing us to re-post this on the NCWN-West blog. 

Learn more about Bill Everett on his site: http://williameverett.com/about-me/

In my teaching career I authored eight books and numerous articles in social ethics and religion. After over thirty years of academic work — in Germany, India, and South Africa as well as in the United States — I wanted to turn my hand to writing that was more poetic and expressive. I also wanted a more viable balance between my work with words and my work with wood, especially furniture for worship settings. For more about my woodworking, go to www.WisdomsTable.net, where you will also find galleries of artwork by my wife Sylvia, whose ancestors were the original inspiration for Red Clay, Blood River.    ----William Everett

Catherine Carter has poems featured in Still: The Journal and Cold Mountain Review, plus a contract for a full-length poetry collection with LSU Press

Catherine Carter, a NCWN-West member, has three poems in Still: The Journal, this fall (http://www.stilljournal.net/catherine-carter-poetry2017.php), “Chickweed, Hens”, “Night Driving, Lighted Windows”, and “The Promise.” 

Cold Mountain Review will showcase  three of Carter's poems in this fall’s special issue on Extinction: “The Rapture”, “Copperheads in Heaven”, and “Crow Cosmogony.” "The Rapture" is nominated for a Pushcart Award.

LSU Press has awarded Carter a contract for her third full-length collection, Larvae of the Nearest Stars, to be published in Fall 2019.

Additionally, Carter is scheduled to be one of two featured poets at the NCPS Poetry Day at Lenoir-Rhyne in Hickory on April 21.