SUCCESSFUL MOVE TO COMMUNITY ROOM AT JCCFS FOR LITERARY HOUR

We had a good audience at the Literary Hour in the Community Room of the John C. Campbell Folk School Wednesday evening. With a larger venue there is more seating available and it is more comfortable than the chairs in the Library. We hope this will entice even more visitors to our monthly reading.

I could see that more JCCFS students attended, and we hope that trend will continue. Mary Ricketson was host and the three readers, Maren Mitchell, Ryvers Stewart and Richard Cary, all members of NCWN-West, were entertaining as they read their poetry.

As always we thank the John C. Campbell Folk School staff for setting up chairs and making us welcome.

We also appreciate the support of the Folk School through their advertising on our website and our blog. We reach out to writers around the world with our online presence including our Facebook Page.

We ask our readers to click on the John C. Campbell Folk School logo on the sidebar of this blog post. There you will see the writing classes offered at this venerable campus that attracts students from our local area, our state and from other continents.

Some of the best writers have taught at John Campbell Folk School for many years including the late poet laureate of NC, Kathryn Stripling Byer. Other poets were the late Nancy Simpson, outstanding poet and first Program Coordinator of NCWN-West.  Dr. Gene Hirsch taught poetry at the school for many years and is responsible for the Writing Program at JCCFS. Dr. Hirsch will be in Hayesville, NC on Wednesday, June 19, 10:30 AM at the Moss Memorial Library. Everyone is invited to come and hear him read at Coffee with the Poets and Writers.

Dana Wildsmith, Valerie Nieman, Karen Holmes, Rosemary Royston, Ruth Zehfus, R.T. Smith, Carol Crawford, and so many others have brought inspiration and knowledge to those of us who create with pen on paper or with a keyboard and monitor.  I, personally, owe my writing career to those teachers who have come here to the far western mountains of North Carolina, to the little town of Brasstown, to share their wisdom with us.


Valerie Nieman will teach a three hour session on Under Pressure: Creating Complex Characters at Moss Memorial Library, Hayesville, NC on Saturday, July 6, 1:00 - 4:00 PM.
Fee: $40 - pay to NCWN-West. Mail to PO Box 843, Hayesville, NC 28904

Read more from Val Nieman Here.

Joan Howard and Gene Hirsch are featured at CWPW June 19

Coffee with the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature poets Joan M. Howard and Eugene Z. Hirsch, MD, on Wednesday, June 19, 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 their 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.

           

Howard's poetry has been published in POEM, The Road Not Taken: The Journal of Formal Poetry, the Aurorean, Lucid Rhythms, Victorian Violet, the Wayfarer and other literary journals.  She published the book Death and Empathy: My Sister Web in 2017. Her latest book is Jack, Love and the Daily Grail.

Howard is a former teacher with an MA in German and English literature.  She is a member of the North Carolina Writers' Network West and North Carolina Writers Network.  She enjoys birding and kayaking on the beautiful waters of Lake Chatuge near Hiawassee, Georgia.

           

Hirsch has taught clinical medicine for forty years. During his career he volunteered at the Cleveland Free Medical Clinic, conducted poetry workshops for health professionals as a way of dealing with emotional stresses of patient care, and lectured medical students on death and dying. He has published two poetry books and assembled six anthologies. Dr. Hirsch has been a valuable asset to the local writing community for twenty-five years. His poetry has appeared in medical and non-medical journals. He received First Prize in the 2019 Westmoreland Cultural Society He instituted and taught poetry at the John C. Campbell Folk School and co-founded the NCWN-West with poet Nancy Simpson with whom he was a close friend for many years. Hirsch professes that Murphy, North Carolina, is his second home (perhaps even his first).

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

The Literary Hour Readings at John C. Campbell Folk School to feature poets Richard M. Cary, Maren O. Mitchell, and Ryvers Stewart, on Wed., June 12, 2019, in the Community Room

On Wednesday, June 12^, 2019, at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School (JCCFS) and NC Writers' Network-West (NCWN-West) will sponsor The Literary Hour. At this event, NCWN-West members will read at the Keith House on the JCCFS campus, in Brasstown, NC. This event is now held in the community room. The Literary Hour is held on the third Thursday of the month unless otherwise indicated. This reading is free of charge and open to the public. This month's featured readers will be Richard Cary, Maren O. Mitchell, and Ryvers Stewart.

Richard Montfort Cary began writing poetry in high school and continues to this day. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1964 with a BFA in Theatre Arts. He spent six years in regional theatres, before moving year-round to Nantucket Island MA, as a designer & builder of custom homes. In 1985, he founded Actors Theatre of Nantucket and served as Artistic Director for twenty years. Richard and his wife Cheryl moved from Asheville NC to Hayesville NC in 2017. 

Cary’s claim to fame is that his Great Aunt, Olive Dame Campbell, founded The John C. Campbell Folk School. Cary is currently editing over 60 years of his poetry for a collection.

Maren O. Mitchell, a North Carolina native, lived in Bordeaux, France, in her childhood, and in Kaiserslautern, Germany.  She now lives with her husband on the edge of a national forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia.

Mitchell has taught poetry at Blue Ridge Community College, Flat Rock, NC, and catalogued at the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. For over thirty years, across five southeastern states, she has taught origami, the Japanese art of paper folding. 

Mitchell’s poems appear in The Cortland Review, The MacGuffin, POEM, The Comstock Review, Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, Hotel Amerika, Appalachian Heritage, The South Carolina Review, Southern Humanities Review, Appalachian Journal and elsewhere. Work is forthcoming in POEM, Slant, The Comstock Review, Poetry East and Chiron Review. Two poems, “X Is a Kiss on Paper” and “T, Totally Balanced,” have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. In 2012 she received 1^st Place Award for Excellence in Poetry from the Georgia Poetry Society. Her nonfiction book, Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide, (Line of Sight Press, 2012), www.lineofsightpress.com is on Amazon. 

Ryvers Stewart has been writing poetry since middle school, but it was in high school she truly fell in love with it (and acting). She is in the graduating class of 2019 at Tri-County Community College with an Associates in Arts degree, she plans on graduating 2020 with an Associates in Fine Arts. 

On the weekends Stewart can be found playing D&D and Pathfinder. She is currently working on her first poetry book.

For more information on this event please contact Mary Ricketson at maryricketson311@hotmail.com.