|
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
|
|
Monday, March 21, 2016
Call to Writers & Artists for the 19th Annual Blue Ridge Writers' Conference, Blue Ridge, GA, April 8-9, 2016
The Triangle Association of Freelancers announces registration is open for WRITE NOW! 2016's Conference in Raleigh, NC, April 30, 2016
Registration is now open for WRITE NOW! 2016
The Triangle Association of
Freelancers (TAF) invites all to our 9th annual freelance writing conference.
It promises to be our best event yet! Save the date! April 30, 2016
Keynote Address: Getting Published in Today’s World
by Brian Klems, Editor at Writer’s Digest
Brian will also be presenting
a session: 15 Tips in How to Write Like the Pros.
Brian will be joined by other
fantastic presenters such as:
Scott Myers on Character
Development for Screenwriters
Linda Formichelli with Pay the Writer: Making Sure you Get What you Deserve
Tom Welch
shares Running Your Business: Financial Tips for Writers
Don Vaughan
on The
Seven Pillars of Freelance Success
Frank Hyman
shares Column Writing for Beginners
Laura Poole
gives us tips on Self-Editing Made Easy
Connie Gentry
tells us about Writing for Trade Publications
The McKimmon Conference & Training
Center 1101 Gorman Street Raleigh, North Carolina 27606
TAF has worked extremely hard to keep the cost
affordable for all writers.
Registration is just $69; $59
for students with valid ID & seniors 65-plus; $80 at the door.
Registration includes all conference activities,
coffee before the workshops, a catered box lunch, and all beverages. We also
will be giving away some EXCITING DOOR PRIZES!
To learn more, or to register
via PayPal, please visit http://tafnc.com/WriteNow.html
We look forward to seeing you
there! Have a question? Contact Conference Director Donald Vaughan at dvaughan@mindspring.com or by phone
at 919-888-8198.
Saturday, March 19, 2016
Highlights from North Carolina Writers Network-West's Coffee with the Poets and Writers, March 16th, 2016, Hayesville, NC
In case you missed Coffee with the Poets and Writers, sponsored by the North Carolina Writers Network-West, on March 16, 2016, at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC, here are some video excerpts from poet Joan M. Howard, and author Miriam Jones Bradley.
POET JOAN M. HOWARD
AUTHOR MIRIAM JONES BRADLEY
Be sure to join NCWN-West's Coffee with the Poets and Writers, on the third Wednesday of each month, at 10:00 AM, at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Brenda Kay Ledford's Poetry Published
Her poetry, "Homemade," and "Pie Crust," will appear in the spring, 2016 issue of "Shemom."
Brenda's poem, "Patchwork Memories," was published in the spring, 2016 issue of "West End Poets Newsletter," created and issued by: Carrboro Recreation and Parks Department.
www.westendpoetsweekend.com.
Wednesday, March 16, 2016
Don't Miss this Writers' Conference in Greensboro, NC Saturday, April 23
GREENSBORO—The fiction offerings at the upcoming North Carolina Writers' Network 2016 Spring Conference, Saturday, April 23, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, will encourage attendees to build a firm foundation before choosing to zig when others zag by finding inspiration in the everyday and establishing a firm sense of place.
Spring Conference registration is now open.
Visit the website to see the excellent presenters at this annual conference. See the poetry, nonfiction and other topics on the schedule.
The price is right and if you live within driving distance this event is a bargain.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
POETRY DAY SET FOR APRIL 2,2016, AT LENOIR RHYNE UNIVERSITY, HICKORY, NC; CO-SPONSERED BY NC POETRY SOCIETY
Poets and poetry lovers from around the state will converge on the Colloquium Room at the Lenoir Rhyne University Library in Hickory, NC, from 11:30 to 3:30 P.M. on April 2 for this year’s celebration of Poetry Day. This event co-sponsored by the NC Poetry Society and Lenoir Rhyne will feature readings and workshops by this year’s winner of the Lena Shull Book Award, Stan Absher, and noted poet and scholar Kathryn Kirkpatrick of Appalachian State University.
The Lena Shull Book Award is presented annually at Poetry Day by the NC Poetry Society to the best new poetry manuscript by a NC poet. This year’s winner, “Mouth Work” by Dr. Stan Absher, will be published by St. Andrews Press. Absher, received his PhD in 18th century literature from Duke University in 1986. He is also the author of The Burial of Anyce Shepherd (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2006) and Night Weather (Cynosura Press, 2010).
As part of the day’s events, Dr. Absher will read from his award-winning book and lead a workshop entitled “The Very Word Is Like a Bell.” Using examples from several poets (e.g., Keats, Elizabeth Bishop, Philip Larkin, Henry Reed), the workshop will focus on how a shift in diction or an image or metaphor can transform and enlarge the working space of a poem to include multiple, even conflicting, points of view and bodies of experience. Participants will look at strategies for introducing and exploiting these shifts to create richer poems that, via text or subtext, embrace more of life and see more deeply into its complexities.
Dr. Absher’s reading and workshop will be complemented by a reading and workshop from poet and scholar, Dr. Kathryn Kirkpatrick. Author of six collections of poetry, including,Our Held Animal Breath, winner of the NC Poetry Society’s Brockman Campbell award, Dr. Kirkpatrick is a literary scholar in Irish studies and the environmental humanities at Appalachian State University. She has published essays on class trauma, eco-feminist poetics, and animal studies. She is also editor of Cold Mountain Review, a literary journal founded at ASU in 1972.
Dr. Kirkpatrick’s workshop will be entitled “Running Aground: When Poets Get Stuck, and will offer suggestions for cultivating flexibility in our creative lives, especially in response to getting stuck in writing projects. Participants will address how their subjects might be asking us for a change of poetic form and how a shift in the circumstances of their lives invite them to engage in a different writing practice. Participants are asked to bring the draft of a poem over which they feel they’ve run aground so that they can work to get themselves back into the creative flow.
Poetry Day will also include an Open Mic (limited to 10 participants) and book sales for NC Poetry Society members in attendance.
Poetry Day is sponsored by the North Carolina Poetry Society and Lenoir Rhyne University
Readings are free and open to the public. Workshops cost $10 each. Register by contacting Scott Owens (828) 234-4266 or asowens1@yahoo.com
Scott Owens www.scottowenspoet.com www.scottowensmusings.blogspot.com www.poetryhickory.com www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com www.234journal.com www.ncpoetrysociety.org
Friday, March 11, 2016
Pat Conroy, southern author has died.
http://www.npr.org/2016/03/05/469337158/remembering-pat-conroy-a-master-who-searched-out-the-world-in-stories
I never met Pat Conroy except through his books. I read about him in articles and interviews, but I feel I really came to know him when I read his memoir, The Death of Santini. I know others like Dana Wildsmith who knew him personally and they tell about a generous man, a kind man, a person they liked.
I never met Pat Conroy except through his books. I read about him in articles and interviews, but I feel I really came to know him when I read his memoir, The Death of Santini. I know others like Dana Wildsmith who knew him personally and they tell about a generous man, a kind man, a person they liked.
I have always found it interesting that Pat Conroy is known as a
southern author but he was raised on military bases and never felt he had a
real home, not until his family settled in Beaufort, SC when he was twelve. He made
that area his home and you will visit there in his novels. I have enjoyed
his books, Beach Music, South of Broad, The Water is Wide, The Death of Santini
and My Reading Life. I haven't read The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini
which were made into movies.
I hear that The Pat Conroy Cookbook is excellent. In the description
of the cookbook, it says: A master storyteller and passionate
cook, Conroy believes that "A recipe is a story that ends with a good
meal."
That statement makes me think of my own
family of storytellers and the good meals we enjoyed together.
I loved his books
because he wrote with such an appreciation of language. He admitted he was a
wordy writer. He told his editor Nan Talese, of Doubleday, when he first met her, "I
will tell you, if there are ten words for something, I will use all ten. Your
job is to take them out."
I relate to that trait. One of Conroy's books that I enjoyed
and recommend to my students, is My
Reading Life.
..."He has
for years kept notebooks in which he records words and expressions, over time
creating a vast reservoir of playful turns of phrase, dazzling flashes of
description, and snippets of delightful sound, all just for his love of
language. But reading for Conroy is not simply a pleasure to be enjoyed in
off-hours or a source of inspiration for his own writing. It would hardly be an
exaggeration to claim that reading has saved his life, and if not his life then
surely his sanity."
He grew
up in a terribly dysfunctional family with a father that beat
him and abused his mother.
"Writing
has been not therapeutic for me, but it has been essential," he said in an
interview for Morning Edition.
"I have written about my mother, my father, my family ... and if I get it
on paper, I have named the demon."
I
understand that sentiment as I have been writing all of my life trying to
understand why I was different from my siblings, and trying to understand my large family. Those of us who write
autobiographical stories and books learn more than we ever expect to learn when
we set to the task of explaining on paper how and why things happened as they
did.
Many of us think we have dysfunctional families,
but the Conroy family is one that makes me feel my family was perfect. Although
I had a distant and cold relationship with my father, he was never abusive
or mean to me. Like Conroy, however, I learned to understand and forgive my
father for those things he did that seemed cruel to me or unreasonable. I learned
by writing about him and researching the man, not the troubled father I knew.
Before The Great Santini’s death, Pat and his
father had come to terms with Pat's writing openly about the family and
his father's cruelty of his family. They could be found signing Pat's books together.
One
reason I so admire Pat Conroy is because he was extremely honest, not holding
back on the painful and embarrassing or humiliating events although he knew he
would suffer consequences from siblings and relatives. That is why his
memoir, The Death of Santini, got to me. He told the truth without intentionally
hurting those he loved. Although a sister, whom he said he adored, became
so angry with him that their relationship was irreparably strained,
he hoped to repair that damage.
A woman
commented online that as a fifteen-year-old, she met the author at one of his book signings, and he took time
to meet with her and encourage her with her writing. They continued to
correspond, and he became a part of her life. She said she would be forever
grateful to him for his kindness and his generosity. She was not the only one. Others commented on his giving his time, going the extra mile, to help a wanna be writer.
"Pat Conroy's
writing contains a virtue now rare in most contemporary fiction: passion."
The
Denver Post
I also
like that Pat Conroy was very successful without studying writing in college or
earning an MFA. He said there were no classes on writing fiction at the
Citadel, a military school, his father insisted he attend. But he began writing
fiction while there.
Some
people believe that you cannot be a successful writer unless you take writing
at the university and go on to get your Masters in Fine Arts. Pat said he was a
storyteller and came from a southern family of storytellers. He told his
stories in poetic language and captured his readers with his ability to clamp
our minds and our eyes on his words.
I think Pat Conroy proves you have to love
writing, be a reader and study writing by others, practice every day and have a
passion for the craft. I believe that taking writing classes goes a long way
toward building your writing career, but some people have a gift that they
recognize, a desire to share their stories whether in fiction or nonfiction,
and when they are ready and are good enough, they find the kind of success
Conroy found.
"'Pat has been my beloved friend and author for 35 years, spanning his
career from The Prince Of Tides to
today,' said his longtime editor and publisher, Nan A. Talese of Doubleday. 'He
will be cherished as one of America's favorite and bestselling writers, and I
will miss him terribly,' Talese said."
Coffee with the Poets and Writers, Wednesday, March 16, 2016, 10:00 AM, at the Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC
Coffee with the Poets and Writers
Hayesville, NC
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 2016, 10:00 AM
MOSS
MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Our first meeting this
year of Coffee with the Poets and Writers will feature two members of the North
Carolina Writers’ Network West. This event will be held at the Moss Memorial Library, 26 Anderson St, Hayesville, NC 28904.
Joan Howard, well-published poet from Hiawassee, Georgia will share
her poetry with us. Her poems have been published in the
Aurorean, Miller's Pond, The Road Not Taken:The Journal of Formal Poetry, Lucid
Rhythms, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Eclectic Muse, Victorian Violet, the Deronda
Review, Our Pipe Dreams, The Lyric, GPS The Reach of Song, a chapbook, Red Fox Run, and POEM.
Miriam Jones Bradley, from Henderson County, NC, is the author of a children’s book
series, The Double Cousins Mysteries,
a memoir, All I Have Needed-A Legacy for
Life, and You Ain’t From Here, Are
Ya, Reflections on Southern Culture from an Outsider. Miram' link is: http://www.miriamjonesbradley.com/
The latter is a
collection of articles by Bradley, from a South Carolina newspaper. She will
read and speak about her writing experience.
Glenda Beall, a Clay County Representative for NCWN West, facilitates this
monthly event each year from March – December.
Everyone is invited. You
can meet other writers, learn about writing events in the area and read a short
prose piece or a couple of poems during Open Mic. There is no charge.
Join some of us for lunch
after the meeting at Angelo’s on the square.
We appreciate the Moss
Library providing a room for us. Coffee with the Poets and Writers is sponsored
by North Carolina Writers’ Network West which is a program of the North
Carolina Writers’ Network.
For more information
contact Glenda Beall, 828-389-4441.
Glenda Barrett and Bob Grove to read at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC,on Wed., March 16, 2016 at 7:00 PM
JOHN CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL READING, MARCH 16, 2016, AT 7:00 PM
On Wednesday, March 16th, 2016 at 7:00 PM, John Campbell Folk School and NC Writers Network West are sponsoring The Literary Hour, an hour of poetry and prose reading held at Keith House on the JCFS campus, 1 Folk School Rd, Brasstown, NC 28902. This is usually held on the third Thursday of the month but this month is an exception by holding it on the second Wednesday. The reading is free of charge and open to the public. Poet Glenda Barrett and writer Bob Grove will be the featured readers. Both of these authors are residents of the area and published extensively. It should be an entertaining evening.
 |
| Glenda Barrett |
 |
| Bob Grove |
Most recently, he has published a mystery novella, Secrets of Magnolia Manor, his memoir, Misadventures of an Only Child, a collection of children’s stories, Adventures of Kaylie and Jimmy, and has written several flash fiction stories as well as some forgettable poetry.Bob has been awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in the Silver Arts literature competition.
Bob’s public readings are popular as a performance art form, typified by his annual December reading, in costume and dialect, of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the John C. Campbell Folk School.
All Bob’s publications are available on Amazon Kindle, and you are welcome to visit him at bobgrove.org.
Contact: Lucy Cole Gratton, Cherokee County Representative –NCWN West
828-494-2914
lgratton@hughes.net
Thursday, March 3, 2016
CMA Poetry Workshop with Catherine Carter
NetWest member Catherine Carter will teach a poetry workshop for Cullowhee Mountain Arts from June 26-July 1. This workshop will offer an opportunity for students to explore their relationship with the nonhuman through poetry; if we've ever been in a place that feels sacred, special, or magical, or had a relationship with animals or gardens, or cherished a secret sense of identification with Batman’s botanical nemesis Poison Ivy, we've participated in the construction of and the relationship with nature. More, though, if we drive—if we eat—if we breathe, we're also interacting with the nonhuman, because all that we have and are, and all that we’ll ever have or be, comes from the world we inhabit. This workshop will explore ways to articulate that relationship through language. We’ll look at the ways in which accessible, enjoyable poems by authors like Robert Morgan, Mary Oliver, Ron Rash, and Sarah Lindsay engage with the nonhuman and with particular places, and we’ll write and revise our own poems about our own engagements with what’s not-us. Weather permitting, we may go outside to practice the art of looking at what’s there; it’s surprising what you can see in a few minutes, if you pay attention. Students should leave with new poems to work on and new inspiration for future work; all levels of writers are welcome.
http://www.cullowheemountainarts.org/week-3-June26-July1/catherine-carter-swamp-monsters-and-bone-eating-snotflowers#sthash.Fa6bECdO.dpbs
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)