July's Coffee With the Poets and Writers

Coffee with the Poets and Writers meets Wednesday, July 9, at 10:30 a.m. at Blue Mountain Coffee and Grill on the corner of Hwy 141 and Hwy 64 in Cherokee County, NC. The community is welcome and visitors are invited to participate at open mic by signing up to read a short prose piece or a couple of poems.

Featured this month is Glenda C. Beall, poet and writer from Hayesville, NC. Beall's poems have appeared for the past nineteen years in literary journals and magazines such as Main Street Rag, Appalachian Heritage and Journal of Kentucky Studies. Her work can be found online in Wild Goose Poetry Review, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and Your Daily Poem as well as in anthologies, Kakalak, Carolina Poets 2009 and On Our Own, Widowhood for Smarties. Recently a poem was selected for the Reach of Song anthology published by the Georgia Poetry Society, and another is forthcoming in The Southern Poetry Review VII, North Carolina.

She is author of Now Might as Well be Then, a poetry chapbook, published by Finishing Line Press. Her nonfiction has been published in Reunion Magazine, Bereavement magazine, and in several anthologies including Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, and Cup of Comfort for Horse Lovers.

Beall's writing is influenced by her rural upbringing with six brothers and sisters. Like most poets and writers she observes people, nature, and happenings around her. She uses these observations to create images in her poems, stories and essays. She says she writes to communicate her thoughts and feelings with her readers. She believes poetry should be accessible to the non-writer as well as to other poets. 

A former Program Coordinator for the NC Writers' Network-West, she continues to volunteer as Clay County Representative and facilitator of Coffee with the Poets and Writers. For the past five years she has been owner/director of Writers Circle around the Table, where she has brought outstanding writers and poets from Atlanta, Charlotte, and Hickory, NC as well as the best local writers to teach at her studio. Beall will teach a writing class in August at Tri-County Community College.

For more information about Coffee with the Poets and Writers, call 828-389-4441.

HERE, WHERE I AM

HERE, WHERE I AM

Janice Moore, Patricia Spinkle at Writers' Night June 14

for directions, see http://www.uccommunitycenter.com/location.html

Netwest Members offered discount on classes before deadline

Netwest members - take advantage of this opportunity to attend a workshop with well-published Atlanta author, Patricia Sprinkle.

Saturday, June 14 - Take individual classes, 10 - 1:00 and 2 - 5:00 p.m.,  or take both classes for $60. This writer speaks to large groups, teaches workshops and we are fortunate to have her come to our area. If you write fiction or nonfiction, you don't want to miss out on this one-time opportunity. We will have lunch together and you will have the opportunity to network with other writers and with Patricia.


Each class fee is $45 or both classes for $60.00 Netwest members - $40 for individual classes. 

Light lunch included for those who register for all day session 

 Deadline for registration: Thursday, June 11

Call 828-389-4441 or email glendabeall@msn.com 

Visit www.glendacouncilbeall.blogspot.com for class description.

The Literary Hour at JC Campbell Folk School

On Thursday, June 26, 2014 at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School and N.C. Writers Network-West are sponsoring The Literary Hour, a monthly hour of poetry and prose reading held at Keith House on the JCCFS campus. The reading is free of charge and open to the public. 

This month presents an exceptional opportunity to meet and listen to the featured readers, Nancy Simpson and Brenda Kay Ledford, whose poetry mostly centers around the mountains.

NANCY SIMPSON

 

Nancy Simpson is the author of three poetry collections: Across Water, Night Student, and most recently Living Above the Frost Line, New and Selected Poems (Carolina Wren Press, 2010). She also edited Echoes Across the Blue Ridge (anthology 2010). She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a BS in education from Western Carolina University. She received a NC Arts Fellowship and co-founded NC Writers Network-West. For more than 30 years, young writers have known her as “beloved teacher.” Simpson’s poems have been published in The Georgia Review, Southern Poetry Review, Seneca Review, New Virginia Review, Prairie Schooner and others. Her poems have been included in anthologies, Word and Wisdom, 100 Years of N.C. Poetry and Literary Trails of N.C. (2008). Her poems have also been featured in Southern Appalachian Poetry, a textbook anthology published at McFarland Press.

Nancy lives in Hayesville, NC. Through 2010 she served as Resident Writer at the John C. Campbell Folk School. Presently she teaches Poetry Writing at the Institute for Continued Learning at Young Harris College.

BRENDA KAY LEDFORD

Brenda Kay Ledford is a seventh generational native of Clay County, NC, and holds a Master of Arts in Education from Western Carolina University.

She writes about her heritage and has done post-graduate work in Appalachian studies. Brenda received the Paul Green Multimedia Award from North Carolina Society of Historians seven times for her books, collecting oral history, and blog, Historical Hayesville.

Her work has appeared in Our State, Carolina Country Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Appalachian Heritage, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Asheville Poetry Review, Country Extra Magazine, Blue Ridge Parkway Silver Anniversary Edition Celebration, and many other journals.

Finishing Line Press published Brenda’s award-winning poetry books: Shewbird Mountain, Sacred Fire, and Beckoning. She co-authored Simplicity with Blanche L. Ledford. These books are available at the John C. Campbell Folk School Craft Shop.