Do You Know Joan Gage?

Getting to Know Each Other in NCWN-West

Joan Ellen Gage

Some of our members have not yet met Joan Ellen Gage in person. She is an author of humor and inspiration written from her own unique perspective. Her recipe for her writing focuses on staying upbeat and laughing at her own foibles. Joan’s photos are the spice in the mix that serves to punctuate the writing and add that special garnish to her creations. Photography is one of her hobbies.

Joan lives in Clay County, North Carolina, with her husband and her beautiful Belgian Tervuren Dog, Magnolia. If you know Joan, you know Maggie. Since I am a dog lover, Joan and I have had that in common since we first met even before she moved here.

Visit Joan’s blogs, Traveling at the Speed of Now, www.joanellengage.com, and A Redhead Blogs at 60!,  https://joanszoneblogalicious@wordpress.com. See her Facebook page where you hear her read her poems. There you can get better acquainted with Joan.

We are fortunate to have Joan Gage as a member of NCWN-West and as our Tech Administrator. She maintains our blog and website. She keeps our membership page updated with your pictures and bios. We have a Facebook page that she also manages. Joan has a quiet personality, but she is a busy and active member of NCWN-West. She holds a writing contest in Hayesville schools each year. She visits businesses and obtains prizes for the winners. An Awards Night is held in the spring, and the winning students read their work.

Joan volunteered with NCWN-West events including the Festival on the Square, A Day for Writers, our conference last year and the tribute to Kathryn Stripling Byer. She has coordinated the Celebration of Life of Nancy Simpson on May 5 at the John C. Campbell Folk School. She has been most helpful to this writer in many ways including facilitating Coffee with the Poets and Writers the latter part of 2017.

Joan wrote and published five books, Water Running Downhill, Embracing Your Inner Cheerleader!, A Redhead Looks at 60, Trinity’s Adventures in Imagination and a special edition of Water Running Downhill! The Rose Edition as a tribute to her friend Rose Helena Macedo Kull. All of the books are available as eBooks. Joan has given author talks, and had several radio interviews. We have enjoyed her readings at the John C. Campbell Folk School and Coffee with the Poets and Writers.

She may work quietly, but she leaves a large footprint wherever she chooses to be involved.

If you receive this post in your Inbox, please go to www.netwestwriters.blogspot.com and leave your comments for Joan in the comment section below. I hope you will thank her for all she does for us. 

Mary A. Ricketson's new Poetry book, Shade and Shelter, has been published by Kelsay Books

Mary A. Ricketson's new poetry book, Shade and Shelter, is available through Kelsay Books, and at The Curiosity Shop bookstore in Murphy, NC. 

Please join her at her readings planned so far, May 4, 2018 at the Curiosity Bookstore in Murphy, NC, at 3:30 pm, along with Shelby Stephenson, NC Poet Laureate, and on May 17, 2018, at the John C. Campbell Folk School, at 7 pm, for The Literary Hour.  

Additionally, this book debuts her journey to merge the poet  with the therapist in her.  It's for 'the broken and the healing,' and she is seeking ways to work with groups for empowerment and growth.

  Mary Ricketson of Murphy NC, has been writing poetry for 20 years; to satisfy a hunger, to taste life down to the very last drop. She is inspired by nature and her work as a mental health counselor. Her poetry has been published in Wild Goose Poetry Review, Future Cycle Press, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Lights in the Mountains, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, Freeing Jonah, and her chapbook I Hear the River Call my Name. Mary's second poetry book is Hanging Dog Creek. Ricketson's third book, Shade and Shelter, is newly released from Kelsay Books.

Ricketson is  Cherokee County's Representative for the North Carolina Writers Network-West, and is the president of Ridgeline Literary Alliance.

Ricketson writes a monthly column, "Women to Women", for The Cherokee Scout, Murphy's newspaper. She is a Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor, an organic blueberry farmer, and is currently working on a new collection of poetry.