Writers Night This Saturday: Scott Owens, Staci Bell

September 13

Featured on Writer's Almanac and winner of many poetry awards, Scott Owens once again travels from Hickory, NC to read for us. He'll also teach a workshop at Writers Circle in Hayesville on Saturday.

Joining him at Writers' Night Out on September 13, will be writer and former talk-show host, Staci Bell, from Murphy.
An open mic follows the featured readers. Sign up at the door.

We meet at the lovely Union County Community Center in the heart of Blairsville.  Come early for dinner and drink (optional, for purchase).

Important Update (/12/14): This month, we will meet in the A/B Conference Rooms on the ground floor where we were last month. Dinner is optional and served upstairs in the View Grill (great view of the golf course and mountains!). There will be complimentary iced tea and water served in our room. You can bring food and a drink (alcohol included) down with you if you'd like, but there will be no waitress service in our room.  

Program starts at 7:00, so please plan enough time to order/eat if you're having dinner there. The Union County Community Center is gracious enough to not enforce a minimum food order for our group, so you don't need to feel obligated to have anything (but the socializing is fun!).

For more info: kpaulholmes@gmail.com

Ellen Schofield will be missed as Program Coordinator

We are all sorry that our Program Coordinator resigned, but happy that she accomplished so much in the year that she served.

From the beginning, Ellen Schofield reached out to our entire Netwest region, the nine counties of NC and the counties in bordering states. She had to get on a fast track to learn the ropes and meet the members. Being a person who is well organized herself, she organized and set up a website and streamlined our blog and other features. The membership page she created for us is the only online presence some of our members can claim.

In May, a short time after Ellen came on board, we held the first Netwest Conference since 2006 with a large attendance, good faculty and fellowship for writers from all over western NC and north Georgia. By using the funds accumulated in our Netwest treasury, Ellen set the registration fees well within reach of our members. By holding the conference in the beautiful Sylva Library, for free, the event drew members from the north end of the region, Henderson County, to the far south, Cherokee County in NC and Fannin, County in Georgia.

Karen Paul Holmes who facilitates Writers’ Night Out in Blairsville, GA said, “Ellen jumped right in with two feet and was dedicated to the job. She was always pleasant to work with on matters regarding Writers' Night Out and fully supported my choice of a new venue. She also knew the importance of good communication, both in general announcements to the full membership and also in quick responses to individual emails.”

Although Ellen was not well-known to many members when she accepted the PC position, she endeared herself to all she met and was open to helping writers in any way she could. Having served as Program Coordinator for two years, 2007, 2008, I know the job requires hours of time that the average member doesn't realize. Much of the job is done out of the public eye.

Bill Ramsey of Hendersonville said, “Writers can be contentious at times. Incidents of contention like the role of Netwest relative to the Network, the governor's naming of a new NC poet laureate and lesser skirmishes could have been real setbacks. Ellen is a peacemaker and some of that was needed during her term. We need more peacemakers.”

Along these same lines, Bob Grove said, “Ellen has had a positive influence on maintaining a complementary relationship between Netwest and the Ridgeline Literary Alliance. Her openness in dialog, warmth toward fellow writers, and follow-through with the challenges and responsibilities of her position set an example that will be hard to replace. Ellen will be missed.”

I asked Ellen what she enjoyed about being Program Coordinator for NCWN West and she said, “I appreciated the trust placed in me, and I particularly enjoyed traveling and meeting many of the members. Writers are always interesting people, and I made many good friends in my short tenure.”

When asked the reason for her resignation, Ellen responded, “My job description called for me to spend 10-12 hours per month for a compensation of $200, which seemed appropriate. However, I quickly realized that I could just barely cover the minimum responsibilities of the PC job in that amount of time. I came to believe that in order to be fully engaged, and effective, a Program Coordinator needs 10-12 hours per week - at a minimum. Unfortunately, my circumstances do not allow me to do the job as it is now without more compensation, and my work ethic does not allow me to do the minimum.”

Ellen said she hoped that until a new Program Coordinator, who has the same dedication as those who came before her who asked for little or no compensation, can be found, her hope is that the NetWest members will see themselves as members of an influential state-wide organization and follow the lead of its capable Executive Director, Ed Southern. 

Poet and Artist Laurence Holden to Teach a Fall Workshop

Who: NCWN/NetWest member Laurence Holden

What: Fall workshop, "Drawing from Our Own True Nature"

Where: North Georgia mountains: Kawani, 226 Beck Rd, Clayton, GA

When: November 8 and 9, 2014

The workshop combines drawing, writing, seeing, sensing, touching, listening, and telling. Each morning, participants will strike out on foot from Kawani to discover the rhythms and patterns in nature that resonate within them in ways that are singular to each of us and call us to know ourselves more intimately and more clearly.

SCHEDULE:

October 9: DEADLINE to pay for a place in the workshop, which is limited to 12 participants. Click here to register.

Friday November 7 , 7-9 pm. get to know and orientation session at Kawani, 226 Beck Rd, Clayton, GA, Laurence's home and studio.

Saturday - Sunday,  8:30 a.m. meet at Kawani and head out into the forest. We will return each day in the late afternoon in time for refreshments.

Sunday November 9, 4 -6 pm  refreshments and a gathering, sharing and summing up together of what was learned and exploring where to go from there.

Who Can Benefit:

• if you miss a personally embracing relationship with the natural world
• if you have the recurring feeling that nature has something to teach you
• if you enjoy the outdoors and would like to explore a new approach to the experience
• if you are an artist or crafts person who draws inspiration from nature
• if you suffer from nature deficit disorder
• if you are an artist or crafts person stuck in a creative rut, or just grown stale in your approach

What to Expect:

• small group size - workshop is limited to only 12 participants.
• An immersion in the natural world bit by bit through all your senses
• exploring techniques handed down from before the dawn of time for seeing, sensing and understanding the patterns and rhythms of life embedded in nature
• a series of guided generative experiences in seeing and sensing to connect the rhythms and patterns in nature with those already living within each us
• as you immerse yourself, layer by layer, into the rhythms and patterns of nature you will begin to recognize layer by layer the patterns and rhythms within yourself that generate and shape the grain of your own life.

For more information, click here.

Carol Crawford will teach two classes in September

Go to the link below to learn about the classes Carol Crawford, program director for the Blue Ridge Writers' Conference, will teach in September. Taking registrations now.

http://glendacouncilbeall.blogspot.com/2014/08/new-class-begins-september-11-with.html#.U_4mNvldUTg

Coffee with the Poets and Writers in Far Western North Carolina

Coffee with the Poets and Writers, a monthly literary event held at Blue Mountain Coffee and Grill, 30 NC Hwy 141, Murphy, NC will hold a reading at 10:30 a.m., Wednesday, September 10 by two outstanding published poets, Carole Thompson of Blairsville and Peg Bresnahan of Transylvania County NC. The public is invited. Carole Richard Thompson and her husband moved to Blairsville, in the North Georgia mountains, 21 years ago. After being a portrait artist for many years, she began to study writing, and joined the North Carolina Writer’s Network. She credits her love for writing to her friend and mentor, Nancy Simpson, whose classes in creative writing and poetry have been her greatest source of inspiration. Her first short story, "A Bag of Sugar for Paula," was published in The Liquorian Magazine, and also the anthology, Christmas Presence, published by Catawba Press. Her story, "The Uniform" appeared in the anthology, Clotheslines, published by Catawba Press. Her essay, “The Common Thread” won the 1991 NSDAR Best of Show and National Gold Honors Award in their National Heritage Committee, Literature and Drama Division Contest. Carole’s poetry has appeared in anthologies, A Sense of Place, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, and Women’s Spaces, Women’s Places as well as in poetry journals. In 2013, her poetry book, Enough, was published by FutureCycle Press. The title poem, “Enough,” is a compliment to a long marriage which endured ups and downs. She recalls wartime partings, letters, and phone calls – never enough. But in the later years, being together every day is now enough. Peg Bresnahan’s second poetry collection, In a Country None of Us Called Home, was recently published by Press 53. Peg is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. She received her MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpeliar. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and anthologies.  She lives in Cedar Mountain, NC with husband, sculptor, Dan Bresnahan. She says she moved to the mountains of western North Carolina and the land of waterfalls from the Door County Peninsula of Wisconsin, exchanging what she thinks of as the horizontal water of Lake Michigan for water that is decidedly vertical.  Kathy Smith Bowers, former Poet Laureate of North Carolina said of Peg’s latest book, "This is one of the most beautifully crafted and moving collections I have read in a long time."

Coffee with the Poets and Writers is open to the public at no charge. Bring a poem or short story and read at Open Mic. Those attending are invited to join the writers and poets after the event as we pull tables together and enjoy a social hour.

Coffee with the Poets and Writers is sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network West. Contact NCWN West Representative, Glenda Beall, at 828-389-4441 or gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com  for information.