Mother Jones Premiere

"Mother Jones" will premiere at the Franklin Unitarian Church on April 7th at 6:00. All members of Network West are invited. "Mother Jones" has already been picked up by a series of organizations in WNC and will probably be a fundraiser for folks like The AVE literary festival in Andrews, Rickman's Store in Macon County, and the Highlands PAC. In addition, "Outlander" will be produced in June at the Parkway Playhouse. It now has a complete musical score composed by Frank Lee, a well-known musician in Swain County. We will probably tour it this fall. I am also conducting a workshop in storytelling at the Carolina literary festival in Wadesboro on April 13-14 and will probably repeat the workkshop at Lake Junaluska in September. --Gary Carden

Nancy Simpson Will Teach Poetry Writing Workshop

POETRY WRITING WORKSHOP FOR PRACTICING POETS

Nancy Simpson will teach a new Poetry Writing Workshop at Institute for Continuing Learning Young Harris College beginning April 10th. This class will meet 3:15 to 5:15 each Tuesday for 6 weeks. The focus will be on your poems. If you are a practicing poet and want to share your writing with other practicing poets and get constructive comments, this is the class for you. Each week you will bring copies of one poem. There will be instruction as we discuss your poems, but no lecture. We will discuss the publication process, and a list of up to date markets will be given at the last meeting. Class will be limited to eight members. http://iclyhc.org/

CITY LIGHTS BOOKSTORE FRIDAY NIGHT

www.citylightsnc.com

Carole Thompson           Glenda Beall                Mary Ricketson                                      Robert S. King         Scott Owens   FutureCycle Press Book Release    Please join us at City Lights Bookstore on Friday, March 23 at 7 p.m. for a double book launch.  FutureCycle Press will unveil its annual anthology of poetry and flash fiction as well as a new poetry collection from Scott Owens titled For One Who Knows How to Own Land.  Owens and a few of the contributors to the anthology will read some of their work.  Featured writers will be Glenda Councill Beal, Robert S. King, Scott Owens, Mary Ricketson and Carole Richard Thompson.

City Lights Bookstore 3 East Jackson Street Sylva, NC 28779 828-586-9499 more@citylightsnc.com always open on the web at: www.citylightsnc.com Store Hours: Monday-Saturday, 9 am - 9 pm Sunday 10 am - 3 pm Additional parking catty-corner to the store, courtesy of First United Methodist Church

FESTIVAL ON THE SQUARE 2012 - NETWEST WILL BE THERE

We are very happy that the Clay County Historical and Arts Council has accepted Netwest as a vendor this year. That means Netwest will have a booth at the Festival on the Square in Hayesville, NC on Saturday, July 14 and Sunday, July 15.

President of CCHAC, Janice Padgett, contacted us recently and said that NCWN West could make application for a booth. The festival is on the historical square of our town, and each year every inch of space under the old trees around the Courthouse is filled with tents of artists and crafters. Painters, photographers, jewelry makers, colorful fabric work and iron sculpture catch the eye. Live music is played all day in the gazebo, and the cloggers perform on Saturday.This festival now includes all of the arts.

Writing is a literary art, of course, and for the first time in several  years, we will be there with our popular anthology, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, edited by Nancy Simpson and filled with the words of mountain writers.

Our members who have published books are invited to bring a few copies for the table. We might hold periodic readings throughout the day. If so, we will post times.

We will also need volunteers, hopefully a few strong ones, to help erect the tent and set up tables Friday afternoon, and take down the booth on Sunday at 4:00 p.m.

This will be a wonderful opportunity to introduce the public to our anthology and to let them meet the writers in this area.

Contact Glenda Beall, 828-389-4441 for more information regarding the Netwest booth.

Robert S. King, poet and editor, at Coffee with the Poets

Robert S. King                                                                                Nancy Simpson

         Nancy and Mary listen to Robert read.

Mary Ricketson from Murphy, NC will read her poetry at the book launch for the anthology, Future Cycle Flash Fiction - Poetry 2011, March 23 at City Lights Books in Sylva, NC. A number of Netwest members are listed in the table of contents for the book. Glenda Beall and Carole Thompson are also on the program to read at City Lights.

Brenda Kay Ledford 
will be the featured reader in April.

We appreciate Liz, owner of Cafe Touche. Besides the delicious sweets, she is now offering lunch. We can continue our socializing right there after the readings. Today the menu was baked ziti and a salad bar.

JC Campbell Folk School Reading

Featured reader for Thursday, March 15th, 7:00 pm, Keith House is JC Walkup. JC is a graduate of the University of Texas and currently enrolled at UNCA in The Great Smokies Writing Program. She serves as the Haywood County Representative for Netwest.

JC is a workshop junkie and a research addict who prefers following clues to actually writing. Five years working at United Artists and thirty-three years in the defense industry failed to rehabilitate her. Now she feeds her habit with daily doses of words.

Come hear JC read -- she plans on having something humorous, so a laugh is in your future!

CARL SANDBURG WRITER IN RESIDENCE RECEPTION

The Carl Sandburg Writer in Residence, Alice B. Fogel will be at the Hendersonville Chamber of Commerce, 204 Kanuga Rd. for a free public reception and reading on Friday evening, March 16 from 5-7 pm. 

She will be at the Blue Ridge Community College on March 30, in the Patton Bldg, Room 150 for the Student Poetry  Contest Celebration.

 The community is invited to attend.

NEWS FROM HENDERSON COUNTY, NC

Fountainhead Bookstore in Hendersonville announces Michael Hopping will read from his Short Story Collection MacTiernan's Bottle, Friday, March 23rd at 6:30 p.m.
He will be available for a Q&A session.
He is immensely talented and has honed the craft of saying much - really painting a scene and characters - within a limited number of pages.

Contact the bookstore for more information.

The Fountainhead Bookstore
408 N Main St.
Hendersonville, NC 28792
828-697-1870
www.FountainheadBookstore.com

Liar's Bench Updates

The next Liars Bench is on March 15th and this marks the first in a series entitled "Balsam Chronicles." The Jackson County Arts Council gave us a grant to do a series of programs on the history, folklore, music, poetry, etc of Jackson, Macon and Swain. This was will focus on Cashiers Valley, Whiteside Mountain, square dances, Kidder Cole and Charlie Wright who got a Carnegie medal for rescuing Gus Baty when he fell/jumped off Whiteside.

The April Liars Bench will deal with the hanging of Jack Lambert in Bryson City (then called Charleston) with descendants of both Jack Lambert and the murder victim, Dick Wilson in the audience. Jack was innocent and we hope to celebrate this story with appropriate music, poetry and storytelling.

My play, "Outlander" will audition next month with a premiere planned for June at the Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville. (I would have preferred the Peacock Theater, but it didn't work out.) The play will have original music by Frank Lee of Bryson City and there is a possibility that the play will tour this fall.

I will be conducting a workshop at the Carolina Literary Festival on April 13-14 at Wadesboro. The topic is, how stories become "theater."

--Gary Carden




My play, "Mother Jones" will premiere at the Unitarian Church in Franklin on April 7th with Lara Chew in the role of Mother Jones.

How Many Mistakes Will You Accept

Many books I read today have errors in them. Some are grammatical. Some are misspelled words and some have misplaced modifiers.

Granted most of the better publishers have copy editors that correct this kind of problem, but I wonder why we still find so many books that seem like the writer refused to let a good editor make changes in the work.

For some reason, when I pick up a book with obvious errors, I don't want to buy it. I don't want to go any further. It gives me the impression that the writer, the editor, and the publisher don't have much pride in the product.

I have been told that is the reason book stores don't like to carry self-published books -- they just don't measure up to the books on the shelves. And book store owners don't want to put a book on the shelf when the writing is mediocre and the errors slow down the reader.

How do you feel about buying a book and finding errors on every other page?

Even if the book is touching, humorous, and filled with a story that grabs me, I turn off on the errors.

How about you? What do you think about producing a book filled with errors.?

Leave a comment and give us your opinion on this matter. It is not hard to do. If you don't want to leave an email address, just click on anonymous.

Upcoming Events in Hiawassee/Murphy Area

Just a friendly reminder of upcoming events: Friday, March 9th, Writers' Night Out will be held at Young Harris College, 7 pm, Wilson Lecture Hall (Goolsby building). The featured poet is Atlanta poet, Rupert Fike. Fike’s collection, Lotus Buffet (Brick Road Poetry Press), has earned him a nomination for Georgia Author of the Year 2011 in poetry. 

Two of the poems in the book have also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Writer Barbara Hamby says, “What happens when you cross a Southern raconteur with a Buddhist monk? You get Rupert Fike’s exhilarating poems.” His work has been published in Rosebud, The Georgetown Review, Natural Bridge, The Atlanta Review, The Cortland Review, storySouth, The Blue Fifth Review and others. He has a poem inscribed in a downtown Atlanta plaza, and his non-fiction work, Voices from The Farm, accounts of life on a spiritual community in the 1970s, is now available in paperback. As usual, open mike will follow after the reading.

Thursday, March 15th, 7:00 pm, John C Campbell Folk School will feature JC Walkup and Glenda Barrett as readers, Keith House. This will be an excellent reading!

Both events are free and open to the public!

COFFEE WITH THE POETS AND WRITERS IN HAYESVILLE

Coffee with the Poets and Writers meets Wednesday, March14, 10:30 a.m. at Café Touché in Hayesville, NC. A member of NCWN West is featured each month. The featured writer this month is Robert S. King.

Robert is a new member of NCWN West. He had been active in the Georgia Poetry Society while living in the Atlanta area. Now living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia, Robert said he was pleasantly surprised to find such a large writing community here. He joined Netwest and continues as a member of the Georgia Poetry group as well.

He will be teaching a workshop at Writers Circle in Hayesville, March 17, and will be speaking at the Blue Ridge Writers’ Conference in Blue Ridge, Georgia on March 31.

His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Lullwater Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Writers' Forum.

He has published three chapbooks (When Stars Fall Down as Snow, Garland Press 1976; Dream of the Electric Eel, Wolfsong Publications 1982; and The Traveler’s Tale, Whistle Press 1998). His full-length collections are The Hunted River and The Gravedigger’s Roots, both from Shared Roads Press, 2009.

He recently stepped down as Director of FutureCycle Press in order to devote more time to his own writing. He continues to serve the press as Poetry Co-Editor.

The public is invited to come and meet Robert, hear him read his poetry, and to read their original poems or short prose at open mike.

Café Touche, 82 Main Street, serves the best coffee in town and no one wants to leave without having a delicious muffin.

Contact Glenda Beall 828-389-4441 for more information.
This event is free and is sponsored by NCWN West also known as Netwest, a chapter of the North Carolina Writers’ Network.

NCWN West Has Lost a Member

Our Long-Time Member Nancy Gadsby lost her battle with cancer last night. The message below came to us from her son.

John Gadsby asked me to let his mother's writer friends know that "she went to be with her Lord last night." All of her children were with her. He will let me know the funeral arrangements when they are completed.

Please let our writing community know.

Jo Carolyn


ARRANGEMENTS: Funeral at 11:00 Tuesday Feb. 28, 2012 at McConnell Baptist Church in Hiawassee, Georgia.

Blogging and posting your work on the Internet

We hardly give a second thought to how easily our words or pictures on our blogs can be stolen and used for profit. One of our Netwest members, Sam Hoffer, has created a food blog (http://www.mycarolinakitchen.blogspot.com/) Her comments come from readers all over the world who find her Carolina Kitchen fun to read with colorful photos of the dishes she prepares. She, like all of us bloggers, could be a target for some unscrupulous people out to make a buck off our work.

According to Blogher.com, a woman from Thailand copied recipes and photos of another food blogger and put them into an e-book, which she sold on Kindle. The food blogger would never have known except for a reader who informed her of the plagiarism.

To read the entire article click on the link below.

www.blogher.com/prominent-food-blogger-discovers-plagiarized-ebook

Today a Netwest member asked if he posted his writing on his blog, would that hinder his chances of having this work published later. This is a question I've heard over and over. I’d like to hear what your experience has been? Have you posted your poems or prose on your blog and later submitted this work to a publisher? Was the publisher averse to publishing writing that had been on your blog?

Give us your opinion. Click on comments at the end of this post. Write your comment in the box provided. If you want to make it really easy, just click on Anonymous and you don't have to give your email address or URL.
(Remember, your comments won't appear immediately. An administrator of this blog has to first read your comment and then post it to this site.)

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: TSUGA, BY ADAM BIGELOW

MOUNTAIN WOMAN: TSUGA, BY ADAM BIGELOW: A dam Bigelow is a horticulturalist, amateur botanist, organic gardener, musician, community activist, environmentalist and c...