Ready to get to work on your writing?

Ready to get serious about your writing? NCWN-West holds writing events in most counties southwest of Asheville. As far north as Henderson County and as far south as Cherokee County, find an opportunity near you  to meet other writers. When you attend and meet others who write poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, you will be welcomed. The meetings are open to the public. We hope you will join us as you learn what NCWN-West offers our members. We hold  events for writers in Blairsville and in Young Harris, Georgia.

 Writers' conference at Hinton Center in Clay County NC

Visit the Events, Groups and Workshops page on this website for contact information. 

Call for submissions Creative Nonfiction Competition

Great monetary rewards in this contest:

The North Carolina Literary Review will be accepting submissions for the 2020 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize competition. We have $1000 in prize funding for the winner and finalists selected for publication in NCLR by final judge Philip Gerard, author of Cape Fear Rising and winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award for U.S. Southeast - Best Regional Fiction.  



Submit essays, memoir, travel writing, and other creative nonfiction up to 7500 words between January 15 and March 1. For eligibility guidelines and submission instructions, go to: http://www.nclr.ecu.edu/submissions/albright-guidelines.html. 
We require no submission fee, but you must subscribe or join the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association to submit. 

See back issues for previous years’ winners and finalists. For subscription information, go to www.nclr.ecu.edu.  



North Carolina Literary Review
Mailstop 555 English
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC 27858-4353

www.nclr.ecu.edu
phone: 252-328-1537

Editor: Margaret D. Bauer (BauerM@ecu.edu)



Please like us on Facebook for up-to-date NCLR news posts:

https://www.facebook.com/northcarolinaliteraryreview

Jackson County Open Mic Night, 6:00 p.m. Friday, January 17th

Jackson County's monthly Open Mic night at City Lights Bookstore on Spring Street in Sylva has a new time--6:00 p.m. instead of 7:00 p.m.  The next Open Mic is Friday, January 17th.  Come on out and read with and/or listen to a small but friendly and supportive group of writers, and have a glass of wine and a cookie!

Hat's off to NCWN-West member David Andrew Westwood--new book, The Paisley Tree House

Check out NCWN-West member's new book, The Paisley Tree House



Sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll ... and a distant place called Vietnam. 1968 is shaping upto be a tumultuous year in America, though in Topanga Canyon, northwest of Los Angeles, little of the tumult is visible. Freaks coexist with straights and bikers, the sound of dulcimers and the smell of weed is in the air, and young men quietly disappear to serve in a war in Indochina. One Topanga family embodies the conflict sweeping the nation-—the Sobieskis. But unlike most, it’s parents Maddy and Bret who are laid-back hippies, and elder son Jackson who perversely yearns to prove himself in battle. Middle children Sundown and Robbie are, like their parents, well entrenched in the counterculture, while young Charity just tries to make sense of everything. Soon, the family’s ties are tested by the worst upheaval they can imagine. And at the center of it all is the paisley tree house.


David Andrew Westwood was in an L.A.-based band in the early seventies, and as a transplant from London the whole experience seared itself into his memory, turning itself into textural detail for The Paisley Tree House. Nevertheless, this is not an autobiography. Westwood is the author of thirteen other novels.

You can find Westwoods work at Amazon.com, and at:

 https://www.davidwestwood.com/writings

Stop the Trees from Growing

You can read a poem of mine, Stop the Trees from Growing, on Your Daily Poem,

http://yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=3204
If you like it, I hope you will leave a comment.

Thanks, Jayne Jaudon Ferrer, for continuing to publish poems every day.

Come see Bob Grove perform A Christmas Carol, tonight, at the John C. Campbell Folk School at 7:00 PM, Keith House Community Room, Brasstown, NC

December 11, 2019

Time: Admission:

7 p.m. - 8 p.m. Free

Location:  Community Room, Keith House

A Christmas Carol

In period costume, Bob Grove will present a dramatic reading of the classic tale, including character voices. In the familiar story, miser Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Future who, in the course of a night, convince him to abandon his "bah, humbug" ways.

https://www.folkschool.org/event.php?event_type_id=15

Please leave your comment. They are important to you.

In May 2008, when this blog was very new, I posted the following directions on how to leave comments.

I have updated the text and updated my email address. I am no longer writerlady. I am now gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com.

I will go over the comment process and hope it will be helpful. At the bottom of a post is a line of type with the name of the person who posted the story. This may not be the writer. It might be me, Glenda Beall.

Next to my name and the date you will see a line that looks like this:

0 comments or (number) comments.

Click on comments. A window opens. 

Write your comment in the window or box.

You may sign your name in the same window with your comment, if you want. We are allowing anonymous comments, but each one is read before it will be published.

You can also leave it as anonymous and the comment will be posted with no name.

Blogger was bought out by Google, so if you have a "google account" or if you want one, complete the information asked for. (gmail is a Google account) If you have a gmail account (email) it is very easy to comment on this blog.

To make it simple, post as anonymous. Click on preview and see your comment as it will appear. Click on Publish when you are sure it is just the way you want it. 

X out of the comment window and forget it for awhile.

The comment must first be approved before it will show up online.

I will read and publish it for the blog site. We do this to protect our blog from spam that can pop up from some nasty people out there.

Your comment will not show as soon as you post it. Please be patient. Come back some hours or even a day later and check to see if your comment has been published. You might have a response to your comment. Search Engines, I'm told, learn much from your comments which can be helpful in building your platform as a writer.

We appreciate your efforts to let our writers know what you think. You can also email gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com if you have any questions or comments about this site.

BOOKMOBILES STILL SERVE RURAL COMMUNITIES

Earlier this year I wrote an article for the NCWN Newsletter that featured libraries. I was asked to write about bookmobiles. I wondered if we still have bookmobiles. I well remember the bookmobile that came to our farm in the summer. I loaded up on books to read until the bookmobile came again.

Bookmobiles Then and Now

As a little girl, I loved books. In the summer, on the farm, I had no books to read until the big yellow bookmobile pulled into our yard. It was my lifeline to the outside world. Mother called out, bookmobile is here. My little sister and I scrambled out the door and ran to the vehicle that looked like a van. Inside was a small library, its shelves lined with books for all ages. 

I remember the smell as I climbed the three steps up into the truck, a mix of polished wood and books. The front and back doors were opened wide to let in light. My eyes went straight to the books about horses.

We loaded our arms with as many as we could carry. Mother said, “Now, remember there are other children who want to read some of these books. You can’t take all of them.”

I never thought about where the bookmobile came from or where it went when it left our house. I devoured the books, and I could hardly wait for its return.

The bookmobile served rural areas as early as 1904. The People’s Free Library of Chester County, South Carolina provided a mule-drawn wagon that carried wooden boxes filled with books. In those days, bookmobiles were known as book wagons.

A pioneering public librarian drove a Ford Model T packed with books to rural areas in New Jersey as early as 1920. 

In 1923, it was the Hennepin County Public Library of Minneapolis that followed with bookmobile services. In the 1930s and the 1940s, in Kentucky and in Appalachia books were taken to those who were unable to make it to a library. However, the real boom for bookmobiles was throughout the 1950s when I was a child.

In 1950, North Carolina had the highest number of bookmobiles—87. Thanks to the Library Services Act of 1965, the bookmobile services rapidly spread and reportedly reached more than 30 million people across diverse rural communities. In 1970 bookmobiles in this country numbered two thousand, but in 2012 there were only eight hundred bookmobiles left in this country. Part of the decline was due to high cost of fuel. 

The Nantahala Regional Library Bookmobile serves Clay county.

Early bookmobile in Kentucky

Trudy Morrow and Debbie Whitener, librarians on wheels

Recently I talked with Trudy Morrow and Debbie Whitener, who drive a bookmobile in three counties taking books to those who have no other way to get them. Debbie said she has been doing this for seventeen years.

I told them how much the bookmobile meant to me when I was a kid. They were happy to take me inside and show me the newer version. Their route includes Clay, Cherokee and Graham Counties in rural western North Carolina. This bookmobile is based out of the Nantahala Regional Library, located at 11 Blumenthal St. Murphy, NC. Another bookmobile serves Jackson, Swain, and Macon counties as well as the Qualla Boundary.

The bookmobile has a monthly schedule. The drivers go where they are asked to visit—public, private and home schools, day care centers, nursing homes, and personal homes where people are not able to visit a public library. It takes four weeks to complete the route. The bookmobile maintains contact with the home office at the Regional Library Headquarters via cell phone while out in the service area.

Friday is the bookmobile’s day off, but the drivers/librarians are at the library and on call for anyone wishing to be put on the schedule.

As I stepped up into the mobile library, Trudy showed me the children’s books to the left. Picture books lined the bottom shelf. In the next section were books for older children, both fiction and nonfiction. On the opposite side, on light colored shelves, were the western novels like my father read, Louis Lamour, Zane Gray, Luke Short and books my mother would have checked out. Magazines are available, also. The overhead lights brightened the interior making it easy to read the titles on the covers unlike the dark walls and shelves of my youth. It seemed much smaller than the bookmobile that came to my house. But I was much smaller then.

Here in western North Carolina there is still a need for the mobile library.  I know the joy felt when the bookmobile arrives at someone’s home, whether that person is an adult who can’t go to the downtown library, or a child who has no access to a library. Books can carry that disabled person out into a world he will never see, and it offers dreams for children who might someday have the opportunity to make them come true.

See more photos of early bookmobiles at https://www.boredpanda.com/bookmobile-library-on-wheels/?utm_source=search.myway&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=organic

 

Poets and possible classes for 2020

Congratulations to Carroll S. Taylor for having her poem chosen to appear in Reach of Song for 2019.
Read more including the poem and words of the judge here.

Mary Ricketson recently had another poem published in The Lake, a fine journal.
Read her poem here.

Our Netwest poets continue to submit and publish their poetry all over the world, not just in the USA.

If only Nancy Simpson, poet and instructor, were here to see what she created in Clay, Cherokee, and the counties in north Georgia with her classes at John Campbell Folk School and Tri-County-Community College. 

Nancy Simpson

Carroll Taylor never met Nancy, but has benefited from all of us who learned from Nancy, as has so many others.

Every week I receive calls from people who want to learn, to take classes and become poets and writers of prose and who want to become part of our fabulous writers' group.

Aren't we fortunate to live here and be part of the writing community?

If you live in Murphy, Hayesville, Hiawassee, Young Harris, Blairsville or within driving distance of Tri-County College, you can check with Lisa Long about upcoming writing classes for 2020. Contact me, Glenda Beall, at gcbmountaingirl@gmail.com and I will try to help you with information.

What makes NCWN-West compelling to newcomers

Tonight I read a post that I would like to share with all of you.
Carroll S. Taylor has a beautiful website and her blog is called Journal. 
This post, on November 4, comes from her heart, I know, and she sounds much like I did when I moved here to this part of the world and my life forever changed. 
Read this and see what you think.
http://chinaberrysummer.com/journal-1

Literary Hour at JCCFS - last one this year

Read about last evening's reading at the John C. Campbell Folk School.
Click this:   https://www.glendacouncilbeall.com/2019/11/literary-hour-finale-for-2019-starred.html#.XdgrAJNKiM8

Here is a photo.

Linda Jones, Janice Moore, Meagan Lucas

Ricketson and Davis Featured at Coffee with the Poets and Writers

Mary Ricketson

            Coffee with the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature poet Mary Ricketson and writer James F. Davis on Wednesday, November 20, at 10:30 a.m. at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC. 

The event is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the presentations. Bring a poem or a short prose piece to participate. CWPW is sponsored by North Carolina Writers’ Network-West (NCWN-W) which also includes writers in Towns, Union, Fannin, and Rabun Counties in Georgia.

            Ricketson, from Murphy NC, is inspired by nature and by her work as a mental health counselor. Her poetry is published in Wild Goose Poetry Review, Future Cycle Press, Journal of Kentucky Studies, Lights in the Mountains, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, Red Fox Run, It’s All Relative, Speckled Trout, Old Mountain Press, Whispers, Voices, and Disorgananza. Her work also includes her chapbook I Hear the River Call my Name as well as three full length collections, Hanging Dog Creek, Shade and Shelter, and her newest, Mississippi: The Story of Luke and Marian, published  in 2019.

            She writes a monthly column, “Women to Women,” for The Cherokee Scout.  She is a Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor in private practice and is also an organic vegetable, herb, and blueberry farmer.

James Davis

            James Davis lives in Clay County, NC. He is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network, Ridgeline Literary Alliance, North Georgia Writer's Club, and the Mountain Area Story Tellers. He won second place in a national literary contest. Most of his writing and stories have a humorous bent about personal experiences with people he met.

            Davis grew up working on a family farm. He earned a degree in economics from Cornell University. He earned an MBA in International Affairs and Business and served three years in the Army, leaving as a Captain. The major part of his working life was spent as an international banker.

            He traveled to over fifty countries while living in Europe and Latin America. Through his profession, he had the opportunity to meet world leaders.  Davis served as an elected representative for twenty years in Darien, CT. 

               For more information about this event, please contact Glenda Beall at: glendabeall@msn.com.

by Carroll S. Taylor, CWPW publicity chair and author of The Chinaberry Summer Series

Linda Grayson Jones, Meagan Lucas, and Janice Townley Moore to read at The Literary Hour at JCCFS, Brasstown, NC, on Thursday, November 21, 2019, at 7:00 PM

On Thursday, November 21, 2019, at 7:00 PM, John C. Campbell Folk School and NC Writers' Network-West (NCWN-West) will sponsor The Literary Hour, where NCWN-West members will read at the Keith House’s Community Room on the JCCFS campus, in Brasstown, NC. This event is typically held on the third Thursday of the month, is free of charge and open to the public. This month's featured readers will be Linda Grayson Jones, Meagan Lucas, and Janice Townley Moore.

Linda Grayson Jones, a poetry devotee since childhood, has a B.S. in Biology from

Stetson University, an M.A. in Biology and a Ph.D. in Pathology from Vanderbilt University. In 2009, she returned to her first love—teaching.

Jones is currently an Associate Professor of Biology and Dean of Math and Science at Young Harris College. She remains a reader and writer of poetry. 

Janice Moore is an Associate Professor Emerita of English at Young Harris College.  Her poems have appeared in numerous journals including The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Connecticut Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry East, and The Journal of the American Medical Association.  

Moore's chapbook, Teaching the Robins, was published by Finishing Line Press. Among the anthologies that include her poems are The Bedford Introduction to Literature, and three volumes of: The Southern Poetry Anthology: Contemporary Appalachia, Georgia, and North Carolina, from Texas Review Press.  

Moore is coordinator of the NCWN-West’s poetry critique group and is on the poetry editorial board of The Pharos, publication of Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society.

Meagan Lucas teaches English at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and is the Fiction Editor at Barren Magazine. Meagan has a BA in History from Wilfrid Laurier University, an M.Ed in Curriculum and Instruction from Ferris State University, and an MA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University.

Meagan’s stories have been published in a variety of journals including: Four Ties Literary Review, Santa Fe Writers Project, The Same Literary Journal, The New Southern Fugitives, Barren Magazine and Still: The Journal. Lucas  won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction, was the runner up in the 2017 SNHU Fall Fiction Competition, and a Judge’s Choice finalist in the 2018 Still: The Journal Fiction competition. Her story “Voluntary Action” was nominated by Still: The Journal for a 2019 Pushcart Prize.

Her first novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in August 2019.

For more information on this event, contact Mary Ricketson at:

 maryricketson311@hotmail.com

 

Jackson County Rep Launches Third Poetry Collection, 6:30 pm, Wednesday, 11/13, City Lights, Sylva

Jackson County Netwest Rep Catherine Carter will launch her third collection of poetry with LSU Press, Larvae of the Nearest Stars, on Wednesday evening, November 13th, at 6:30 pm at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. 

Novelist and poet Ron Rash writes of Larvae, "I’'ve been an admirer of Catherine Carter’s poetry for over a decade, but this collection achieves a whole new level with its craft, vision, and urgency. Larvae of the Nearest Stars makes clear that she is one of our country’s finest poets, and her book deserves a place on the same shelf as collections by Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. 'I will not cease telling,' Carter tells us in the final poem. May it long be so."  

Macon County Rep to hold meeting at Cowee School

Brent Martin, representative for NCWN-West in Macon County, has set a date and time for the first meeting for writers in Macon County.

November 14th at 10AM, Cowee School in Macon County, NC.

Brent and Angela are moving their business office to Cowee School Arts and Heritage Center at this time.
As you know, Brent and his wife, Angela, own and manage Alarka Expeditions and have been extremely busy this summer. We have 14 members in Macon County from Highlands to Topton.

All writers in Macon County are invited to attend the November 14th meeting whether you are a member of NCWN or not. If you live in surrounding counties and need a writing group, come and see what the future holds for the Macon County writers sponsored by NCWN-West.

I know all of our members want to support Brent and his efforts to make a difference in the lives of writers in his area.  Contact Brent at alarkaexpeditions@gmail.com

Many thanks to all of our county reps in NCWN-West. Everyone does an excellent job. And good luck to Brent and the writers in Franklin and Macon County.

Jackson Rep to Lead Workshop at NCWN Conference in Asheville

Dr. Catherine Carter, the NCWN-West representative for Jackson County, will be leading a workshop in revising poetry for sound, "It Looks Like a Hairball", from 9:00 to 10:30 Sunday morning, November 10th, at the NCWN fall conference at the Doubletree Hilton in Asheville.  27 are currently registered for the workshop, but walk-ins are are welcome as long the the room has space.

Carter will use contemporary poems to discuss a few of the ways in which a poem can be built around the sounds of single words, model one possible process for revising a poem in this way, and encourage participants to do this with their own works. Participants should bring a hard copy of one or two of their own shorter poems (under a page is preferable) to work on.

November Mountain Writers meeting

Charley says the next meeting of the Netwest Mountain Writers in Haywood county is coming up. 

1)  November 8-10 is the fall North Carolina Writers Network conference, at the Doubletree in Asheville (just north of exit 50 off I-40). Merry and I are attending. See some of you others there, perhaps? (check out https://ncwriters.org/ [programs and services; conferences] if you're interested)

2)  Our November Mountain Writers meeting will be Tuesday the 12th, noon, at Panacea Restaurant (room to the right). Merry and Susanna will talk about the Flatiron Agents thing they both went to.

3)  Then December is Xmas party. Merry asked Tom and Polly to do their He Said/She Said thing at the party. Not clear yet where we'll meet for that. Possibly Panacea for simplicity, but maybe people would like to try somewhere else.

The Netwest Mountain Writers is one of the groups sponsored by NCWN-West. Merry Elrick is the Netwest rep for Haywood County. 

For our many new members, Netwest stands for Network West "NC Writers' Network West".

Charley Pearson and Merry Elrick present excellent programs and many writers throughout the area attend. If you live near enough to drive over, they will welcome you. 

Contact Charley at charley.pearson@gmail.com    

 GCB

Book review of Brenda Kay Ledford's "Red Plank House"

Poems read aloud like music in "Red Plank House"

by:  Marcia Hawley Barnes

Reprinted by permission of Editor/Publisher, Becky Long: "Clay County Progress"
                                            Thursday, October 31, 2019


"Red Plank House" poems by Brenda Kay Ledford, opens a door to the present and past, weaving in glimpses of Southern Appalachia.  More specifically, Ledford's poetry is an intimate look at recent history in Clay County, NC and the beautiful lives of some of the territory's settlers, residents, and the author herself.

Ledford's poems read aloud like music.  There is beat, changing rhythms, a pronounced call to the reader to come close and see "sunsets blazing across Shewbird Mountain," where an old red plank house whispers welcome.

Thirty-four poems fill the pages of "Red Plank House" and verses from "Where I'm From" are certain proof that Ledford writes from the heart and her genuine Appalachian background.  "Mama's Love Offering" on the adjoining page sets the mountain dinner table; and "Apples" transport the reader to an orchard in the 1900s.

Inside the cover of "Red Plank House" eagles cut through the Appalachian sky and mourning doves coo with sounds and rhyme that escape prose.  Phantom storms snort and wild geese wend north.

Ledford patterned a poignant poem after Mary Oliver's "The Summer Day."  Titled "The Rock," the author questions our relationship with an inanimate object and draws the reader to look at pain and beauty in a walk that is circumspect.

Author, poet, blogger, Ledford is an acclaimed and well-recognized literary contributor to Southern Appalachia and beyond.  "Red Plank House" is available at:  www.amazon.com

                                                     Author Brenda Kay Ledford

Sam Uhl of Hendersonville, NC Shares Her News

Radio Interview with The Cheerful Word

Blaine Greenfield, host of Blainesworld on WPVM Radio Asheville (103.7) interviewed Sam Uhl of The Cheerful Word on October 23, 2019 about her work writing and publishing extraordinary stories for everyday people. 

Sam (a.k.a. The Book Doula) discussed how her early life influenced how she became a writer and publisher of memoir. She talked about the many ways she helps people write life story, whether for private family libraries or for profit—starting with as little as an idea or a completed manuscript. Sam described how, through giving voice to your story, you can discover how your life experience has shaped who you are today, and how writing it clarifies who you want to be for all your tomorrows.

Sharing books from her most recently published authors, she highlighted the variety of reasons people write their memoirs and she encouraged us to preserve our legacies while we are still able, just the way we want to be remembered.

Find the complete interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smib3gZZWsA&t=3s

Extraordinary stories for everyday people

CheerfulWord.com

Toll Free: 888-899-9218

Carroll Taylor's Poem published by Your Daily Poem

Congratulations to Carroll S. Taylor. Her poem “Final Wishes" is on  http://yourdailypoem.com 

Carroll lives in Hiawassee, Georgia. She was co-chair for A Day for Writers. She is a retired educator and author of two young adult novels, Chinaberry Summer and Chinaberry Summer: On the Other Side.

Carroll's novels emphasize generational storytelling and anti-bullying, and her stories and poems reflect her affection for reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and other critters. Learn more about her at chinaberrysummer.com.