Is Literature Succumbing to Greed?

Creative literature, like most everything in our society, is not free. It’s troubling, though, to watch more and more magazine publishers charge a fee to read individual works of poems or prose. It alarms me that poets in particular, who have no way to make money from their art, are now forced to pay from $1.00 to $5.00 to submit a few pages of their work. Most of the fee-based journals have academic ties, though sometimes even the smallest press expects payment. I fear that the trend is for these fees to become the rule rather than the exception.  As a long-time literary editor, I understand that presses must seek ways to fund their projects and operations. It’s not a profitable business, whether you are the publisher or the writer. In my opinion, however, there are boundaries we should not cross.

I must hasten to say that I have no problem with fees for contests. I also understand and support those presses that charge reasonable fees for reading a book submission, which takes considerable time and manpower to evaluate—not to mention the costs of publishing and marketing. But should they charge a poor poet five bucks to submit a few poems for an issue of their magazine? That sounds like good old greed to me.

In the case of some magazines, "established” ones in particular, I believe there is a bit of snobbishness and exclusion at work. It’s like they are saying "we are the elite; only those serious enough to pay need apply.” On the more benevolent side, perhaps, it’s also an attempt to curb the avalanche of submissions that some of these magazines receive. However, there are better ways to accomplish that task. For one, just close your doors to submissions for as long as necessary. I also worry about another motive: Charge a fee, get some funds, and reject the unknown poets who you’ve already decided have no chance in hell of getting into your publication. That smacks of con game to me.

To be fair, some fees are in place because the journals use online submission systems such as Submittable. These systems charge the journals a monthly fee for their services. However, the cost is comparatively low and in most cases does not justify the reading fees charged for submissions.

If fees become the norm for individual poems and short prose, I fear literature will become more divided and ultimately impoverished. In our society the gap between rich and poor is widening. So too in literature, publishing opportunities may be limited by the gap between elitist publications and the rest of us. Many of us poor poets and writers won’t be able to buy our way into those magazines, and those magazines will never have the opportunity to discover fresh new writing. I wonder, however, if they care. The literary world has always been a fraternity, but it is disturbing that it seems to be moving toward becoming a completely closed society.

Are You Feeling Isolated? You Don't Have to

As writers in this modern world, we have many opportunities online to read and reach out for information we can use. Our Network site, www.ncwriters.org is filled with places we can visit with a simple click. Many writers have their websites and their blogs listed. You would be surprised at how much you can learn by reading what these writers post.

As writers in North Carolina it helps us to read about what is happening in our government that affects us and our parent organization, North Carolina Writers Network. We have an active and supportive Arts Council which needs our support as literary artists. 

As writers we often become self-absorbed and expect to receive much but don't give much back in return. I enjoy visiting the website of the NC Arts Council and the site of NCWN. I learn about other writers in our state and what is happening in the literary world.

Here in the mountains we sometimes feel isolated, but we don't have to be. We can reach out to writers across the state. I enjoyed a recent email exchange with our former Haywood County Rep, Al Manning who is on the Board of Trustees for NCWN. He lives in Pittsboro now and we discussed how the writing world has changed no matter where you live. He holds Writers Morning Out in his area to keep everyone connected. We all yearn for those good times we have when we like-minded people can gather and talk about writing. We learn from each other and how nice it is to help another writer if we get the opportunity.

I urge everyone to visit our writing sites and connect with a writer who lives in another part of the state. In the world of cyberspace today we don't have to ever feel isolated. We simply have to reach out.

LET NCWN ANNOUNCE YOUR GOOD NEWS ON THE NCWN WEBSITE

For Hat’s Off!, Book Buzz, member readings/events for the Member Readings e-blast and website calendar, workshops/classes/literary events for the Literary Calendar e-blast and website calendar, and submission opportunities (including job opportunities), e-mail:

calendar@ncwriters.org

For Book Buzz, be sure to include the following:

• a paragraph description of your book

• author bio

• ISBN#, price, publisher

• title and author

• a jpg image of the jacket

When submitting workshops or literary events, please include all the above information, including the address of the venue.

Here’s a sample of an event in our Literary Calendar e-blast:

ASHE COUNTY

WEST JEFFERSON
NEW! JOSEPH BATHANTI CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP
When: Saturday, April 20, 2:30 pm
Where: Ashe County Public Library, 148 Library Dr.
Website: www.arlibrary.org
Contact: Karen Moll at kandr@skybest.com or 336-384-4255
Dr. Joseph Bathanti, professor of creative writing at Appalachian State University in Boone and North Carolina’s Poet Laureate, will conduct the workshop for adults and high school students interested in developing their writing skills. The workshop is part of a daylong celebration of events at the library.

For Hat’s Off!, it’s nice to include a link to the publication or contest website.

The Loss of North Georgia Poet, Bettie Sellers

It is with deepest regret we learned of the passing on May 17, of Bettie Sellers, former Poet Laureate of Georgia.
Read more about Bettie Sellers here.

I met Bettie, loved her poetry and bought her books when I first came to Hayesville, NC in 1995. She was a wonderful speaker and an avid supporter of the Byron Herbert Reece Society in north Georgia. Her voice can be heard on the video played at the Reece center in Union County.

Our condolences to her family.

Great opportunity for Mountain Writers

If you don't know about the Squire Summer Residency at Western Carolina University sponsored by your NCWN, please click on the link below and see what is offered. You can apply for a scholarship to this exciting and interesting weekend with three of the best writers in their field.

"Those fifteen hours of workshop time will create a community of common ground, a safe place to refine and polish your work, and maybe the opportunity and inspiration to try something new. Morning and afternoon breaks between workshop sessions give writers a leisurely writing period." 

http://www.ncwriters.org/squire-summer-residency

Netwest member, Kathryn Stripling Byer, elected to NCWN Board of Directors

NCWN West member Kathryn Stripling Byer has been elected to the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers' Network along with a writer from the far eastern part of the state and one from the Raleigh area. Read more here.

http://www.ncwriters.org/news/network-news/3567-three-elected-to-ncwn-board-of-trustees

Classes by Tracy Ruckman, editor and publisher of Write Integrity Press

Workshops - June 1 (fiction) and June 8 (nonfiction) at Unicoi State Park in Helen, GA. 

If you've been considering publishing your own books, these workshops are for you. A completed manuscript is not required, but we'll be looking at the publishing process from completed manuscript to publication. This is a hands-on one-day workshop, and it comes with 30 days of free coaching after the class is over (doesn't have to be the 30 days after the class, it can be any 30 day period within the next year - whenever you get ready to publish your book!)

June 1st: Unicoi State Park, logo room A, 9-5. How to self publish a novel

June 8th: Unicoi State Park, logo room A, 9-5. How to self publish your nonfiction

Classes are taught by Tracy Ruckman, editor and publisher at Write Integrity Press.

Each writer's how-to class is only $99. Register now at http://www.writeintegrity.com/

Early bird registration is $99. On Wednesday, the price goes to $119. 

Register now at http://www.writeintegrity.com/.

http://www.writeintegrity.blogspot.com/2013/04/summer-workshops-for-writers.html

Writing Is Good for your Health

Glenda Beall, owner and director of the Writers' Circle, will teach a series of classes entitled "Healing Through Writing." Classes will be held on Tuesdays, 2:00 to 4:00 pm, from May 14 to June 18.

Research from James W. Pennebaker, author of Opening Up, has proven that writing is good for your health. Evidence shows that writing, particularly about critical events in one's life, enhances the immune system.

For more information, including how to enroll in the course, see the Writers' Circle Schedule page.

Western Carolina University in Cullowhee hosts this year's Squire Summer Writing Residency

2013 Squire Summer Writing Residency will be July 11–14 on the campus of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.

The Squire Summer Writing Residency is the Network’s smallest and most intensive conference. Admission is limited to the first fifty registrants who sign up for one of three three-day workshops:

• Poetry with Kathryn Stripling Byer, North Carolina’s first woman Poet Laureate. Byer has published six full-length collections of poetry, including Descent (LSU Press, 2012), her most recent. A re-print of her first, the AWP Award-winning The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, is forthcoming from Press 53. Her work has appeared in many journals and newspapers, including The Atlantic, Hudson Review, Boston Globe, and Georgia Review.

• Fiction with Elizabeth Lutyens. Lutyens returned to her native North Carolina after a career in the Boston area as a journalist in print and television. Her novel-in-progress, Medicine Island, was a semi-finalist in the 2011 William Faulkner – Wisdom Competition. A faculty member of the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville since 2006, she currently teaches its by-invitation Prose Master Class and is editor-in-chief of its online literary magazine, The Great Smokies Review.

• Creative Nonfiction with Catherine Reid. Reid is the author of Coyote: Seeking the Hunter in Our Midst (Houghton Mifflin) and Falling into Place (forthcoming from Beacon Press); she has also edited two anthologies and served as editor of nonfiction for a literary journal. Her essays have appeared in such journals as Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Fourth Genre, and Bellevue Literary Review. She is currently the director of creative writing at Warren Wilson College, where she specializes in literary nonfiction and environmental writing.

The Residency will begin on Thursday evening, July 11, with registration and check-in. Workshops begin on Friday morning, July 12, and continue until the early afternoon of July 14. The Residency will also feature panel discussions and readings by faculty and attendees.

Registrants also will enjoy meals together and have the option of staying overnight in on-campus accommodations.

“The small class sizes and extended, intensive format of the Squire Summer Writing Residency makes it especially safe for writers to share their work, get to know other writers, and find inspiration,” NCWN executive director Ed Southern said.

Registration is available online at www.ncwriters.org or by calling 336-293-8844.

The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.

RADIO INTERVIEW THIS WEEKEND WITH MAREN O. MITCHELL

RADIO INTERVIEW THIS WEEKEND

WITH MAREN O. MITCHELL,

AUTHOR OF BEAT CHRONIC PAIN, AN INSIDER’S GUIDE

This coming weekend, Saturday, May 4, 2013, and Sunday, May 5, 2013, Maren O. Mitchell will be interviewed by Robin Watts of Regency Hospice in Hiawassee, Georgia, on WJRB FM, 95.1, during the Silver Linings Show. The subject is dealing with chronic pain, and methods other than drugs that can be used to cope with pain.

The broadcast times for the Silver Linings shows have changed, and are now aired on WJRB FM, 95.1. They are: Saturday: 6:30 am; 8:00 pm, and 10:30 pm. Sunday: 6:30 am.

All shows are available on podcast during the broadcast on the website of WJRB (see below). On the Home Page in the upper right corner, click on “Weekends” for the schedule and the live podcast. Click on “Listen Live WJRB” in the upper right corner to activate the LIVE podcast. The interview is not archived online and has to be heard online at the times of airing.

Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide is available directly through Amazon, and through Line of Sight Press, http://www.lineofsightpress.com/.

WJRB FM website, http://www.wjulradio.com/.

BOOK REVIEW of BEAT CHRONIC PAIN by Maren O. Mitchell

Maren O. Mitchell’s Beat Chronic Pain -- An Insider’s Guide offers her reader this specific hope -- Return to Your Life: Ways to Confront and Relieve Pain Through Avenues Other Than Drugs. Another title for this book could have been How To Ignore Pain.

  

The book spoke strongest to me when I read these words:  “How to deal with the 

enemy--(Pain) Ignore him--write him out of your life.”  Maren O. Mitchell‘s positive approach is practical as well as intensely personal. She promises, “Pain does not take well to being laughed at.  When ignored, “It sort of shrinks up and slowly slinks away.” 

There are in this book a number of specific activities for beating pain. One suggestion

is to practice an imaging exercise. You are told to remember “a place and a time when you were stress free, pain free, healthy and strong, safe, loved, happy. Go there and gather images, colors, textures, movement” and more. “Savor the pleasure of being there” and “let your time there give you happiness right now.” See exact instructions on pages 67-71.  The author admits her “favorite place to imagine and travel to is “a two room cabin....that my father built beside a stream in North Carolina.”

I enjoyed reading this book and liked knowing Maren O. Mitchell is a writer and a practicing poet who writes to ignore her pain. A number of her poems are sprinkled throughout the book. Her poems have been also published in some of the best American literary magazines such as Southern Humanities Review, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and in the anthologies, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge and Sunrise From Blue Thunder.

The different approaches that this author offers to help you ignore pain are valuable.  I understand that a person who wants to beat chronic pain does not have to write poems to get relief. That is not the point. Practicing imagery,(which is a technique of poetry)  going back in memory to a favorite place, has been proven to relieve pain, even if you do not write it. During imagery, your mind stays busy for a period of time, for minutes even hours, allowing you to ignore your pain.

If you suffer from chronic pain or you love someone who does, I encourage you to buy this book, read it, find solutions to use and to share.

Book Review by Nancy Simpson

How to order

http://www.amazon.com/Beat-Chronic-Pain-Insiders-Guide/dp/0985311908

Line of Sight Press

PO Box 1103 

Young Harris, Georgia 30582

More Poems by Maren O. Mitchell

http://nancysimpson.blogspot.com/2009/08/three-poems-by-maren-omitchell.html

Macon County meeting for Wordsmiths May 2

Shirley Cole the Representative for Macon County, NC is reaching out to the writers there.

The Wordsmiths of Macon will meet on Thursday, May 2nd, 6 p.m. at 81 Great Oak Drive.
A small supper will be served and the group is getting organized on a writing project.
"We are looking to write poems about all the fruit stands in Macon County as our first writing project."

Shirley encourages all those who write and live in Macon County to participate and take advantage of knowing and sharing with like minded people. Experienced writers can help beginning writers and that is what makes good writers even better. Working together helps everyone involved.

Other posts you might like to read:
http://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-netwest-jc-walkup-tells-us.html

MADISON: A Gary Carden Monologue Celebrating the Life of Dr. Robert Lee Madison

Once again it is our pleasure to announce the performance of a Gary Carden Monologue.  On Friday, April 26, at 7:00 PM, Gary, assisted by  Pam Meister, Curator of the Mountain Heritage Center at WCU, will present “Madison,” on the stage of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Franklin, 89 Sierra Drive.

This is the life story of Dr. Robert Lee Madison, as told by folklorist Gary Carden.  Dr. Madison  in the 1880’s promoted the idea of a school that would train teachers for the mountain schools. There were no public schools, only family schools or subscription schools. Subscription schools required teacher payment up front from families or the schools could not be convened. At best a student’s schooling was sporadic.

Cullowhee Academy was a subscription, elementary school when  Dr. Madison came to the area to finish out the school year for his brother. He found that he liked teaching very much even though it paid very little.   He added to his income by writing for the local paper. His dream of a school that would train teachers began to look more promising when nine successful farmers from the area, later known as the Noble Nine, looked for a school and teachers to educate their school age children. Their funding launched a renewed interest in acquiring land and constructing housing for a new school.

This presentation will honor two important men in our intellectual life.  Gary Carden, who is a member of  the Franklin UU Fellowship, holds degrees including an  Honorary Doctorate, from Western Carolina University.  In 2012 he received the highest honor the Governor and the State of North Carolina can bestow in the Literary Arts.

Gary wrote this monologue to celebrate the life of Dr. Robert Lee Madison, the first President of  WCU, whose guidance and persistence, made possible a university education for himself and for the Appalachian Mountain population.

Tickets for “Madison” are available:

Franklin Chamber of Commerce.               828/524-3161, 

UU Fellowship of Franklin, 89 Sierra Dr.  828/524-6777

At the door the night of the performance   

Event Co-ordinator: Virginia Wilson          828/369-8658    

Thursday Night Reading at the John C. Campbell Folk School

Thursday night at the John C. Campbell Folk School we were entertained with poetry from Robert S. King and a funny, laugh out loud, piece from Bob Groves' memoir. Bob also read some of what he called "awful poetry" that was humorous as well.

Bob Grove

Robert King is one of the best poets around these parts and has published hundreds of poems in journals and anthologies. He has several collections published as well.
Tonight's work was from a yet-to-be published manuscript. I'm sure we will see it in print soon.

Robert S. King

Next month, May 16, featured writers for the Folk School Reading will be Glenda Beall and Carole Thompson.

Deanna Klingel's mini blog, Selling Books

Deanna Klingel, from Transylvania County, NC, is author of a number of YA books. Her books sell and she knows what to do to reach her audience.

Beginning Monday, Deanna Klingel's 30-second mini blog http://www.booksbydeanna.com will start a new mini series called "Selling Books." 

Deanna says, "Some of the posts will take more than 30 seconds, maybe a minute, but they are all taken from my journal, two years and 40,000 miles selling books. 

I've learned a lot about more than just selling books. Come join me. I'll post Mondays and Thursdays."   Deanna