Ricketson and Davis Featured at Coffee with the Poets and Writers

Mary Ricketson

            Coffee with the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature poet Mary Ricketson and writer James F. Davis on Wednesday, November 20, at 10:30 a.m. at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC. 

The event is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the presentations. Bring a poem or a short prose piece to participate. CWPW is sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network-West (NCWN-W) which also includes writers in Towns, Union, Fannin, and Rabun Counties in Georgia.

            Ricketson, from Murphy NC, is inspired by nature and by her work as a mental health counselor. Her poetry is published in Wild Goose Poetry Review, Future Cycle Press, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Lights in the Mountains, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, Red Fox Run, It’s All Relative, Speckled Trout, Old Mountain Press, Whispers, Voices, and Disorgananza. Her work also includes her chapbook I Hear the River Call my Name as well as three full length collections, Hanging Dog Creek, Shade and Shelter, and her newest, Mississippi: The Story of Luke and Marian, published  in 2019.

            She writes a monthly column, “Women to Women,” for The Cherokee Scout.  She is a Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor in private practice and is also an organic vegetable, herb, and blueberry farmer.

James Davis

            James Davis lives in Clay County, NC. He is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network, Ridgeline Literary Alliance, North Georgia Writer's Club, and the Mountain Area Story Tellers. He won second place in a national literary contest. Most of his writing and stories have a humorous bent about personal experiences with people he met.

            Davis grew up working on a family farm. He earned a degree in economics from Cornell University. He earned an MBA in International Affairs and Business and served three years in the Army, leaving as a Captain. The major part of his working life was spent as an international banker.

            He traveled to over fifty countries while living in Europe and Latin America. Through his profession, he had the opportunity to meet world leaders.  Davis served as an elected representative for twenty years in Darien, CT. 

               For more information about this event, please contact Glenda Beall at: glendabeall@msn.com.

by Carroll S. Taylor, CWPW publicity chair and author of The Chinaberry Summer Series

Linda Grayson Jones, Meagan Lucas, and Janice Townley Moore to read at The Literary Hour at JCCFS, Brasstown, NC, on Thursday, November 21, 2019, at 7:00 PM

On Thursday, November 21, 2019, at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School and NC Writers' Network-West (NCWN-West) will sponsor The Literary Hour, where NCWN-West members will read at the Keith House’s Community Room on the JCCFS campus, in Brasstown, NC. This event is typically held on the third Thursday of the month, is free of charge and open to the public. This month's featured readers will be Linda Grayson Jones, Meagan Lucas, and Janice Townley Moore.

Linda Grayson Jones, a poetry devotee since childhood, has a B.S. in Biology from

Stetson University, an M.A. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Pathology from Vanderbilt University. In 2009, she returned to her first love—teaching.

Jones is currently an Associate Professor of Biology and Dean of Math and Science at Young Harris College. She remains a reader and writer of poetry. 

Janice Moore is an Associate Professor Emerita of English at Young Harris College.  Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Connecticut Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry East, and The Journal of the American Medical Association.  

Moore's chapbook, Teaching the Robins, was published by Finishing Line Press. Among the anthologies that include her poems are The Bedford Introduction to Literature, and three volumes of: The Southern Poetry Anthology: Contemporary Appalachia, Georgia, and North Carolina, from Texas Review Press.  

Moore is coordinator of the NCWN-West’s poetry critique group and is on the poetry editorial board of The Pharos, publication of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

Meagan Lucas teaches English at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and is the Fiction Editor at Barren Magazine. Meagan has a BA in History from Wilfrid Laurier University, an M.Ed in Curriculum and Instruction from Ferris State University, and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University.

Meagan’s stories have been published in a variety of journals including: Four Ties Literary Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, The Same Literary Journal, The New Southern Fugitives, Barren Magazine and Still: The Journal. Lucas  won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction, was the runner up in the 2017 SNHU Fall Fiction Competition, and a Judge’s Choice finalist in the 2018 Still: The Journal Fiction competition. Her story “Voluntary Action” was nominated by Still: The Journal for a 2019 Pushcart Prize.

Her first novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in August 2019.

For more information on this event, contact Mary Ricketson at:

 maryricketson311@hotmail.com