Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Curiosity Shop Bookstore, Murphy, NC, to host book signing Sat. 11/28/15, 11 AM to 3 PM for: It’s All Relative: Tales from the Tree, from 50 WNC Women Writers

Celia H. Miles and Nancy Dillingham, are co-editors and contributors of a new anthology by 50 women writers from western North Carolina, entitled: It’s All Relative: Tales from the Tree – celebrating the lives of women and their connections with their families.

Celia Miles, a native of Appalachia, was a long-time English instructor at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College. She is retired and living in Asheville, does freelance editing and writing in various genres.

Nancy Dillingham is a writer, educator and a sixth-generation native from Big Ivy in Western North Carolina. She currently lives in Asheville, NC.

Local authors who contributed to It's all Relative, are from Clay County, Glenda Council Beall, M.C. Brooks, and Blanche L.Ledford. Cherokee County authors who contributed are, Lucy Cole Gratton, Mary Rickertson, and Peg Russell.


The Curiosity Shop Bookstore in Murphy, NC will host the book signing this Saturday, 11/28/2015, from 11 AM to 3 PM. Please come out and show your support for these local authors!

Glenda Council Beall, a Georgia native, lives in Hayesville, NC, and is the owner and director of 'Writers Circle Around the Table', a studio for writers. She also teaches writing in the continuing education department at Tri-County Community College in Murphy, NC. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals and in anthologies. Beall has also published short stories and personal essays.
She has a poetry chapbook, entitled: Now Might as Well be Thenand a family history book Profiles and Pedigrees.
 
M.C. Brooks was a student in one of Glenda Council Beall's memoir writing class at Tri-County Community College in Murphy, NC.

Blanche L.Ledford is a native Appalachian poet, who co-authored the book Simplicity with her daughter Brenda Kay Ledford. Her work has been in many Old Mountain Press Anthologies, and the NCWN-West anthology, Echos Across the Blue Ridge. She also wrote the book, Planting by the Signs, which won the Paul Green Multi-media award from the NC Society of Historians, in 2012.

Lucy Cole Gratton, a native of Decatur, Georgia, has been writing for herself for many years, only lately seeking to publish with some success both nationally and internationally. She has been published in the Wild Goose Poetry Review, is the editor of the book, Red Fox Run,
and has a chapbook published entitled, Inagehi.
 
Mary Ricketson has had her poetry published in many journals, has a chapbook called, I Hear the River Call my Name, and is the author of Hanging Dog Creek. She is also published in the NCWN-West anthology, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge and in the book, Red Fox Run. She also has a chapbook, I Hear the River Call My Name. Mary is the Cherokee County Representative for the North Carolina Writers Network-West and is the president of Ridgeline Literary Alliance.

Peg Russell is a poet and writer. She is the former Prose leader for the NCWN-West Prose Workshop and is published in the NCWN-West anthology, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge. Russell also writes short essays.

Friday, November 20, 2015

Retired Mountain Journalist Writes Mystery/Thriller Novels


          Murphy, NC novelist Wally Avett got a Christmas surprise early this year, when he was notified that Amazon will include two of his books in their annual  Holiday Gift Guide listing.

          MURDER IN CANEY FORK and LAST BIGFOOT IN DIXIE will be among books recommended by Amazon as downloads at $1.99 each during the entire month of December.
          “I’m very happy about the opportunity for sales and exposure,” Avett said this week. “Last year Amazon picked CANEY FORK for its Daily Deal for just one day and it spiked for a week, selling several thousand copies.”
          A graduate of the UNC Journalism School, Avett worked on several Tar Heel daily newspapers before settling in the extreme southwestern tip of the state as editor of the weekly CHEROKEE SCOUT newspaper for the decade of the 70’s.
          He served as Murphy’s town manager during the 1980’s and then pursued a career in sales – outdoor advertising, manufactured housing and then real estate, selling mountain homes to Florida retirees.
          Along the way he did some magazine writing but always dreamed of writing fiction.  He still writes a regular column, HILLBILLY   RANGER, for the local paper in Murphy.
          In the past three years he found an agent, Jeanie Loiacono of Houston, and his four completed novels were published.  They are available at Amazon Books and also at several sites in Murphy.
          “I love a good story,” he says.  “And therefore all my writing is inspired by true incidents, molded to fit my fiction.  CANEY FORK , for example, is based on the true story of a vigilante slaying in a Southern state during World War II.”


          BIGFOOT is a wild rollicking tale written for the homefolks in Murphy with a gentle love story, a little humor and a cast of characters often recognizable to local readers.
          REBEL BUSHWHACKER and COOSA FLYER were both published in 2015, both heavily inspired by local history.
          BUSHWHACKER is a bloody tale of the partisan raiding in the mountains during the Civil War, a number of true incidents included in the fictional treatment, especially the atrocities of real-life southern guerilla, John P. Gatewood.
          FLYER is pure fiction but was inspired by the life of pioneer Georgia aviator Micajah Clark Dyer, who invented and flew a primitive aircraft at least 20 years before the Wright Brothers.
          Avett lives with Dean, his wife of 52 years, on a large creek just outside Murphy. He is a gardener, outdoorsman, Sunday school teacher, gospel singer and reluctant handyman who sometimes tells funny stories.

Avett has joined NCWN, and we welcome him to NCWN-West.

On December 12, Saturday, 1 - 3 p.m. at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC, Wally along with Tom Davis and Deanna Klingel and Glenda Beall will present a panel discussion on publishing and marketing. This is a free event held by NCWN-West and is open to the community at no charge. 
         

          

Sunday, November 15, 2015

Poet John Hoppenthaler will be reading at Young Harris College, Young Harris, Georgia, Monday, November 16, 7:00 PM


Writers and lovers of the written word, note that Poet John Hoppenthaler will be at Young Harris College, Monday, November 16, 7:00 PM, in the Hatcher Room, Rollins Campus Center, Young Harris College, 1 College St, Young Harris, GA 30582..

The event is free and open to the public. A book signing will follow.

John Hoppenthaler's first book of poems is Lives of Water (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2003). His poetry appears in Ploughshares, Southern Review, Pleiades, 5 AM, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney's, Barrow Street, and elsewhere; his essays, interviews, and reviews in Arts&Letters, Southern Review, Chelsea, Bellingham Review, and the Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poetry. The Poetry Editor of Kestrel, he teaches at East Carolina University in Greenville.

Here's a link to some of John's poems:http://www.versedaily.org/2008/aboutjohnhoppenthaleratcr.shtml

Friday, November 13, 2015

2 Very Cool Poets at Writers' Night Out--Tonight, Lucky Fri. 13th



Katie Chaple & Travis Denton from Atlanta

Poets, Editors, Professors, Great Readers. Cool Couple

7 pm, Union County Community Center, Blairsville, GA
Open mic follows: sign up at door, 3 minutes each reader for poetry or prose

Map (note, the Holiday Inn on map is now a Comfort Inn): http://www.uccommunitycenter.com/location.html