Thanks goes to Paula Canup, who intereviewed several writers in NCWN-West and has provided transcripts. Featured today is Maren Mitchell.
Maren O. Mitchell started writing poems when she was eighteen-years-old. Friends and family encouraged her to keep writing. She eventually taught poetry at Blue Ridge Community College in Flat Rock, NC. Her poems have appeared in such publications as the Red Clay Reader, The Arts Journal, Appalachian Journal, and Journal of Kentucky Studies, and Southern Humanities Review.
A native of North Carolina, Maren has lived in France, Germany, and throughout the southeastern United States. She has worked as a proofreader, served as the house manager of a group home in Brevard, NC, and cataloged at the Carl Sandburg National Historic Site in Flat Rock, NC. She now resides in Young Harris, GA, with her husband and two cats.
Maren does not limit herself to poetry. She has a non-fiction manuscript, children’s stories, and essays she hopes to publish in the future. She has other interests besides writing. For the past twenty years, she has taught origami, the Japanese art of paper-folding.
“The most difficult part of writing is continuing to believe that what one has to say is worth hearing. Once you have that licked, stop worrying about what others might think, it’s a lot easier and much more fun,” says Maren. She writes one to two hours every day. She benefits from the feedback she receives from critique meetings with the North Carolina Writers Network – west (Netwest), Shallow Enders in GA, and one-on-one with individual writers. Her advice to aspiring writers is to “just write – at great length and in detail about all you know, wish to learn, and can imagine.”
Maren recently contributed to Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, Stories, Essays and Poems by Writers Living in and Inspired by the Southern Appalachian Mountains, edited by Nancy Simpson and published by Winding Path Publishing. The book is available at local bookstores and on-line at http://www.ncwriters.organd at www.amazon.com.
