You may view her poem at: https://writtentales.com
Additionally, her story, "Special Fashion Show," appeared in the "Good Old Days Magazine," January/February 2023 print issue.
Brent Martin of Macon County was awarded the 2022 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award.
Network member and former Representative for NCWN-West, Brent Martin was selected as the winner of the 2022 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award by the Western North Carolina Historical Association for his nonfiction book "George Masa’s Wild Vision: A Japanese Immigrant Imagines Western North Carolina" (Hub City Press 2022).Annette Clapsaddle of Jackson County was voted Board President for the NC Writers Network.
Last year’s winner of the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award was Network board member Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle for her novel, "Even As We Breathe"(University Press of Kentucky, 2020).
Clapsaddle was sworn in as the next board president of the North Carolina Writers’ Network on December 9, 2022 by a unanimous vote. |
| Brent Martin |
Anne Chesky Smith - Murder at Asheville's Battery Park Hotel: The Search for Helen Clevenger's Killer;Lance Greene - Their Determination to Remain: A Cherokee Community's Resistance to the Trail of Tears;Heather Newton - McMullen Circle; andJohn Ross - Through the Mountains: The French Broad River and Time.
John C. Campbell Folk School has dropped COVID 19 restrictions.
Take writing classes at the Folk School with excellent instructors.
I am taking an online course next year from the Folk School. How nice it is to have the opportunity for both in-person and online classes with these top writers.
The John C. Campbell Folk School changed my life in so many ways. I first took poetry classes with Nancy Simpson, Carol Crawford, Kathryn Byer, and many other writers. Later I taught writing at the folk school and that was a huge step in my life.
Glenda Beall
Tom Hooker
Registration to attend Fall Conference 2022 closes Friday, November 11 at 4:00 p.m. EST (via phone or mail) and at midnight (via online). The conference will be held at the Holiday Inn Resort, 1706 North Lumina Avenue, Wrightsville Beach, NC.
Four p.m. Friday is also the deadline for those already registered for the conference to cancel if necessary and receive a refund.
Learn more about Fall Conference and how to register here.
For recommended hotel accommodations, please visit the Venue section on the Fall Conference 2022 web page.
The 2022 Fall Conference of the North Carolina Writers' Network will open with a keynote address by Jason Mott, winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction.
He will be joined on the conference faculty by more than 20 other writers leading classes on the craft and business of writing, from “Cross-Country Flights and Hollywood Nights” to “Escape from Pompeii: How to Write While the World Around You Burns.”
Instructors include acclaimed novelists Clyde Edgerton and Dana Sachs; poets Mark Cox, Melissa Crowe, Gabrielle Brant Freeman, and Amber Flora Thomas; journalists Russell Worth Parker and Brandon Sneed; editors Margaret Bauer and Emily L. Smith; and many more.
Author, blogger, and poet Brenda Kay Ledford received the Paul Green Multimedia Award from North Carolina Society of Historians for her book, Blanche, Poems of a Blue Ridge Woman.
The Award's Ceremony was held at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, North Carolina on Saturday, November 5. Ledford received the award for the book about her mother, Blanche. Redhawk Publications released the poetry book in 2021.
According to Mary Ricketson, author and mental health counselor, "Blanche comes to life in this memoir of poems. Ledford chronicles a story of her mother's life, flour sacks and all. Blanche rises before dawn, dew soaks her brogans when she goes berry picking. Hens scratch hieroglyphics in the front yard and the sun rises like a ruby over Shewbird Mountain."
Ricketson continues, "I can see the sparkling blue eyes of Blanche Ledford. 'My hands have served me well as blood veins crisscross the Blue Ridge Mountains.' These poems will make you fall in love with the amazing Blanche I knew."
Ledford's book is available at: www.amazon.com and www.RedhawkPublications.com
 |
| P.C. Zick |
Zick’s passion for sharing her stories and helping aspiring writers realize their dreams motivates all her projects. And that’s whether she’s serving as an editor to others or creating her own books that entertain and inform her readers.
Zick writes in a variety of genres, including romance, contemporary fiction, and creative nonfiction. She’s had works in each of these genres published and has won various awards for her essays, columns, editorials, articles, and novels.
Setting plays a significant role in her fiction, beginning with the three contemporary novels in her Florida fiction series, which explore the people and landscape of the Sunshine State. Her romances transport readers to some of her favorite places from Long Island to Chicago to Florida to the Smoky Mountains. Her four separate romance series explore various social issues as people of all ages navigate the complicated road to romance.
Zick has also written a variety of nonfiction books, which include a primer for beginning writers for drafting, writing, and publishing a book. Her book on vegetable gardening combines her husband’s passion for growing food and her love of cooking it. She has also published and annotated the journal of her great-grandfather based on his experiences as a Union soldier during the Civil War.
She and her husband split their time between Tallahassee and the Smoky Mountains near Murphy, where they enjoy gardening, kayaking, golfing, and hiking. To learn more, please visit www.pczick.com.
For open mic, please limit your reading to 3 to 4 minutes maximum for poetry or prose (2 poems only, please) so that everyone who wishes to read has an opportunity to share. To sign up for Open Mic, send Glenda an email (with a sentence she can use to introduce you) by clicking here: glendabeall@msn.com
 |
| Mary Ricketson |
Mary Ricketson will read from her new poetry collection, Precious the Mule, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva on Friday, Nov 11, at 5 pm. City Lights Bookstore is located at 3 E Jackson St, Ste 1, Sylva, NC, a small Main Street town tucked in the heart of the southern Appalachian Mountains.
"Precious the Mule is a story of humanity, compassion, and kindness. My neighbor’s mule got badly injured, frightening all of us who live in this cove. Mingled with the natural beauty of winter and springtime at my home in the Appalachian mountains, this is the story of a relationship I developed with my neighbor the mule a story that joins sorrow and suffering with joy and hope." Mary Ricketson.
Ricketson lives in Murphy NC, works as a mental health counselor and a blueberry farmer. Her poems often reflect the healing power of nature, surrounding mountains as midwife for her words. Her published collections are I Hear the River Call My Name, Hanging Dog Creek, Shade and Shelter, Mississippi: The Story of Luke and Marian, Keeping in Place, and Lira, Poems of a Woodland Woman, and new collection, Precious the Mule.
The Looking Glass Rock Writers' Conference is accepting applications through Dec. 15, 2022, for its May 18 to 21, 2023 workshops in Brevard, NC.
The Looking Glass Rock Writers' Conference, a partnership between the Transylvania County Library Foundation and Brevard College, is a unique creative experience for writers which aspires to foster reading, writing, creativity, and a sense of place in Transylvania County.
"The Looking Glass Rock Writers' Conference is a restorative and invigorating retreat into a beautiful community in a lush part of the country. The short story I worked on while in attendance benefitted from my workshop instructor's critical but kind eye, my peers' honest, thoughtful feedback, and the overall serenity of the small town, small campus environment. The mountains of North Carolina would seem to be made for writers." Jake Lancaster, scholarship recipient and 2022 workshop participant.
You may email questions about applying to lgrwc@brevard.edu.
The Looking Glass Rock Writers' Conference is open for applications to its fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction workshops.
May 18-21, 2023
Brevard, NC
Kenneth Chamlee
Poet Kenneth Chamlee will read, take questions, and sign books at the Brandy Bar, 504 7th Ave E,
Hendersonville, next to White Duck Taco, Wednesday, Nov. 9, at 7 pm.
Chamlee's newest collection of poems, "If Not These Things" (Kelsay Books, 2022), discovers new insights with fresh language in the familiar experiences of life.
"Writing and reading poetry helps me appreciate our natural world, better understand our social world, and accept the constancy of change in both," he said.
His poems have appeared in The North Carolina Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, and Cold Mountain Review, and in two contest-winning chapbooks, "Absolute Faith" (ByLine Press) and "Logic of the Lost" (Longleaf Press).
His poetic biography of 19th century American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, "The Best Material for the Artist in the World," is due out in 2023.
A Professor Emeritus of English at Brevard College in North Carolina, Chamlee holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. He is a 2022-23 Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for the North Carolina Poetry Society.
To learn more about Chamlee and his poetry go to www.kennethchamlee.com.
The final Zoom meeting for 2022 of Mountain Wordsmiths will be Thursday, Oct. 27, 2022. The meeting will feature spooky, scary stories or poems written or appreciated by anyone who wishes to share. You can also bring something to read that feels like October. You don't have to be the author of the piece you're reading. Bring a poem or short piece you like that was written by another poet/writer. Don't stay away because you don't have something to read. Come enjoy the beauty and fun of wordsmithing!
Mountain Wordsmiths will meet again in January 2023.
P.S. March through October 2023 meetings are open! If you would like to be our featured reader for one of those months, please let Carol Taylor know!
Topic:
Mountain Wordsmiths
Time:
Oct 27, 2022 10:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Every month on the Fourth Thu, until Oct 27, 2022, 1 occurrence(s)
Oct 27, 2022 10:30 AM
Zoom link and Open Mic sign-up: Contact Glenda Beall glendabeall@msn.com
 |
| Carroll S. Taylor, poet, novelist, and facilitator of Mountain Wordsmiths |
Congratulations to Carroll S. Taylor whose poem, "Warp and Weft" has been accepted for publishing by the Delta Kappa Gamma Society International Fine Arts Gallery. It will be published online in the Arts Gallery about mid-November. It will be in the gallery for six months and will then be archived for two years.
Carroll is the author of two YA novels, Chinaberry Summer, and Chinaberry Summer on the Other Side. She also recently published a children's book Feannag the Crow with exquisite illustrations by CSA Books, the publisher.
Her poetry is published in a number of journals, reviews, and anthologies. She lives in Hiawassee, Georgia, and is an active member of NCWN-West.
www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/138514
Cold weather--as in freezing temperatures--descended on the mountains this week and will continue through Thursday night. Because the Literary Hour is held in the Open House and the temperatures may dip into the low forties by 7 p.m., we have canceled this month's Literary Hour. The scheduled readers, Richard Cary and CarolLynn Jones, will be rescheduled in 2023.
It may be cold, but the colors have been astounding.
Pat Zick
NCWN-West, Cherokee County representative
We were fortunate to have Dana Wildsmith as our featured guest for Writers' Night Out on Zoom.
She writes poetry and prose and I enjoy all of her books. The memoir, Back to Abnormal, begins with her stepping on a rattlesnake and being bitten. Tonight she told us how upsetting it was for her when people took it so lightly and made it seem to be her fault. Most of us think it just takes a shot of anti-venom and you are fine, but she explains in her book just how painful the whole thing is and that it continues for days and weeks. And she said you take many anti-venom shots, not just one. But, she didn't take the anti-venom shots because she was told that if she was allergic she could die from the shots. It was a horrible experience.
Dana lives on an old family farm in Bethlehem, Georgia, a town where people come at Christmas to have their holiday cards stamped.
Dana's newest book is One Light, a book of poems that centers on the caregiving of a loved one.
Her mother, Grace, probably saved Dana's life when she was fourteen and her nightgown caught fire as she stood too close to the fireplace. The child had massive burns all over her body and needed extensive care as she recovered. But her mother never left her side. In the book, One Light, Dana writes poetry about her mother's care. But she also writes poems about caring for Grace in later life who developed a terrible form of dementia.
Anyone who has cared for a loved one with any kind of brain disorder knows the sorrow and frustration that occurs. I found it enlightening when Dana wrote poems in her mother's voice and in her own voice exploring the situation.
Dana teaches often at the John C. Campbell Folk School online and in person. She will be teaching a class in person in January 2023.
Register early to be sure you can get in. If you live in local surrounding counties, you may get a discount on the price.
We thank Dana for being our guest at WNO and look forward to reading her books which are available at City Lights Books in Sylva, NC, and can be purchased at most local bookstores. You can also order them from the publishers. Go to Amazon.com to learn more.
We welcome you to join us for Writers' Night Out no matter where you live. Writers from Florida, Wyoming, and distant counties in North Carolina attend each month. They often read at Open Mic. Contact Karen Paul Holmes or Glenda Beall if you don't receive an invitation with the link to the Zoom meeting.
OCT. 30-NOV. 5 -
Prose workshop at John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC. Registration is still being accepted.
Valerie Nieman teaching a workshop at the Lights in the Mountains writers' conference
for NCWN-West
North Georgia poet, essayist, novelist, and educator Dana Wildsmith will be the featured speaker at Writers’ Night Out Friday, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m.
Dana Wildsmith’s writing has its roots in literal soil: the earth of the old farm she works to keep alive, as documented in her collection of poems, One Good Hand, and through her environmental memoir, Back to Abnormal, or along the desert sands of our southern border, as told in her novel, Jumping, a story which grew from Wildsmith’s work as a teacher of English Literacy to non-native speakers.
Her most recent collection, One Light, follows the journey of her mother, Grace, down dementia’s rocky road.
Wildsmith has a new book forthcoming from Madville Publishing which took root as the pandemic flourished and we all searched for tools to help us cope with this unprecedented epic. With Access to Tools explores the role of tools in our lives: traditional farm tools, tools of the digital age, and cerebral tools such as patience and memory.
Wildsmith is a highly sought-after teacher of creative writing and has garnered residencies at the Hambidge Center, the Lillian E Smith Center, Grand Canyon National Park, and Everglades National Park.
Her website, www.danawildsmith.com, is the
home of a widely read blog mostly centered on teaching and writing.
Open mic readers are welcome to read poetry or prose for up to 4 minutes (2-poem maximum, please).
Zoom link and Open Mic sign-up: Contact Glenda Beall glendabeall@msn.com
Writers' Night Out is a monthly event sponsored by the NCWN-West.
A Statement of Belief
We
believe that writing is necessary both for self-expression and community
spirit, that well-written words can connect people across time and distance,
and that the deeply satisfying experiences of writing and reading should be
available to everyone.
Distinguished Local Poet Mary Ricketson Will Speak at
Coffee With the Poets and Writers
10:30 AM
October 12 at Moss Memorial Library
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Coffee With the Poets and Writers (CWPW) will feature well-known poet and columnist Mary Ricketson on Wednesday, October 12, at 10:30 A.M. at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, N.C.
The event is free and open to the public. An open mic will follow the presentation. Bring a poem or short prose piece of about three minutes to participate. CWPW is sponsored by North Carolina Writers' Network West (NCWN-W) which also includes writers in Towns, Fannin, Union, and Rabun Counties in Georgia.
Mary Ricketson lives in Murphy, NC, and works as a mental health
counselor and a blueberry farmer. Her poems reflect the healing
power of nature, surrounding mountains as midwife for her words. Her
published collections are I Hear the River Call My Name, Hanging Dog Creek,
Shade and Shelter, Mississippi: The Story of Luke and Marian, Keeping in Place,
and Lira, Poems of a Woodland Woman. Forthcoming book: Precious
the Mule.
She writes a monthly column, Woman to Woman, for the Murphy NC weekly newspaper, The Cherokee Scout.
Her career in the helping professions, since 1970, started as a social worker for the state of Texas. In North Carolina, she was on the original staff of Industrial Opportunities Inc, a sheltered workshop, developing an innovative training and work opportunity for adults with developmental disabilities. Later she led a 3 county community focus group to study domestic violence and sexual assault, culminating in the founding of REACH, emergency and ongoing services to abused women. She earned a Master's degree in Counseling from Western Carolina University in 1979, having traveled after work, five years of night classes, one or two a semester. She has been a therapist of individuals and families since 1978, and since 1987 in private practice as a mental health counselor in Murphy, NC.
Mary has a grown son and says, "If I could choose only one thing to repeat in my wonderful life, I would be a mother, happy for the privilege to give life, to keep the circle going." She also writes, "For a long time when I was growing up, I would write to keep from having to talk, I stuttered so severely. Eventually, I stopped writing and made myself talk, following whatever determination I could muster. Now I write to see what nature has to say to me."
Coffee With the Poets and Writers will meet every second Wednesday from June until December 2022. Masks are optional. Please do not park in the Book Store Parking Lot.
For information contact joanhoward121@gmail.com
By Joan M. Howard
