Clay County Writers Medalists in Senior Games

Raven Chiong, Sandy Benson, Lorraine Bennett, and in front, Brenda Kay Ledford

Every year, the Cherokee/Clay County Silver Arts Literary Contest is held in our area. Those participating must be of a certain age to qualify. 

Click here to read more about these writers and their awards. 

I am so proud of each of them. All are members of NCWN-West. 

This month I will appear face to face with an audience for the first time in two years.

One of my favorite writers was a southerner named Pat Conroy. When Gay, Stu and I traveled to the coast of South Carolina a few years ago, we visited Beaufort, SC where Pat Conroy lived. This setting was as much a character in his books as was the people, mostly his own family, who lived in that area. 

In the photo above, I am sitting at his desk. I was thrilled to sit where he wrote all those books I still read. 

The desk is in the Pat Conroy Literary Center  created in his memory and for writers who come and visit. We had an interesting tour and learned much about this very talented man whose books were themes for several major movies.

Here I am at the Tri-County Community College in Murphy, NC where I taught for years until the COVID-19 Pandemic shut it down. I really enjoyed those classes, held in the evening, where I met talented and creative people who wanted to write and improve their writing. Our classes were unusual I think because we bonded so well and developed friendships that have lasted. Although the college is open again to regular classes, the community development classes have not begun again.

This is a headshot of me on my deck in the mountains before the pandemic hit us. I was a happy person who always loved to be with people and enjoyed having friends come and sit with me on my deck high in the tree tops. The virus that shook the entire world took a toll on me and most of my friends here in our region of the southern Appalachians.
 
The isolation was difficult for me and having no family nearby, increased my concern about getting sick and possibly dying as so many older people did in 2020 and 2021. I had a dear friend whose husband was in his 90s and had to go to a nursing home in his last months of life. She could not go inside and be with him so she stood outside his window every day, no matter the weather, and brought him tasty tidbits and talked with him. The saddest part was his insistence that she take him home every time she came to visit him. 

During this time our active writing group discontinued our meetings. The library and the colleges where we met were closed to public meetings.

The John C. Campbell Folk School where we had met each month for many years closed also. Our Literary Hour was discontinued. In three counties of North Carolina and the bordering counties of Georgia, we have a large number of writers and poets who thrive on being with each other and critiquing our work together. These writers publish their work in books, magazines, online journals and reviews.

Some found the quiet time of isolation enabled them in their writing. It did not work that way for me. I was shut off from "my people" who were my friends. I was not motivated and fell into a depressive state. 

I contracted COVID early on and suffered from long-term side effects. In 2020, my last living brother also had COVID and from that time on he was in and out of the hospital. His wife of sixty years died in February of 2021. He passed away in February of 2022.

My life has been forever changed. Although I began teaching writing classes on Zoom, I did not make a personal appearance all these months. I am grateful for the opportunity to teach online and to take classes online. 

But on August 18, at 7:00 PM I will be a guest for the evening along with Brenda Kay Ledford, a poet from Clay County NC at the John C. Campbell Folk School for the return of the Literary Hour. Click the link below to learn more.

https://netwestwriters.blogspot.com/2022/08/literary-hour-returns-to-john-c.html

At the folk school, there is an Open House, a house with no walls, but with a roof and floor. Gatherings have taken place there all summer. Because it is open and has no walls we feel safer from the virus than inside a building. 

We will use this venue for the rest of this year or until it is too cold to meet outside.

Brenda Kay Ledford, award-winning poet and writer

You can read more about this outstanding writer on her blogs.

Find her books on Amazon.com

Brenda and I hope our friends and those who enjoy poetry and hearing good stories will come to the folk school on Thursday evening, August 18. I will share my creative non-fiction and a short story.

For my blogger friends who live too far away to come, I will post one of my stories in a later blog after the eighteenth. 

I hope you have no residual effects of COVID lingering at your house and that you are living your best life each day. 

Don't forget to leave me a comment. It won't appear right away because I must read it first before it goes up. Thanks.

Festival time in western North Carolina

Glenda Beall with writer Raven Chiong, new member of NCWN-West

This past weekend The Festival on the Square was held on the historic square of Hayesville, NC. Thousands of people attend this event each year, but everything was cancelled in 2020. The NC Writers' Network-West registered for a booth this year. Carroll S. Taylor and her husband, Hugh, volunteered to staff the booth, put up the tent and tables and take it all down on Sunday afternoon. They had a long, tiring weekend, but Carroll said she sold more books than at any other place she has signed books.

Carroll is a novelist with two young adult novels published. She recently published a picture book. Feannag, the Crow is filled with colorful illustrations by Doreyl Ammons Cain.

See more about Carroll at www.chinaberrysummer.com

Brenda Kay Ledford sits with Carroll in front of our banner. Visitors seem to take notice of the Books by Local Authors sign and wanted to take home one of our books. Brenda Kay also published a picture book recently and it, too, had colorful illustrations by Doreyl Ammons Cain

A larger photo of the booth with Brenda and Carroll at the front table.

I sat at the side table on Saturday and Sunday and enjoyed meeting people who stopped by. We wanted to show our presence in the community and encourage novice writers to join us and become a part of our group in western NC. We handed out our brochure with all our contact information and a form for joining NCWN. I expect to hear from folks who want to write and learn more about publishing.

We gave away a number of books and our anthology, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, was popular with visitors from other states. They wanted to take home a book by western NC writers. This book is still for sale by contacting me.   www.pcncwnw@gmail.com 

I signed up to teach another writing class in September on Zoom. I will give more details later.
Hope you all had a great weekend. I am suffering a bit from sitting in that hard chair for hours, but tomorrow I will be fine again.

Poetry abounds in WNC, thanks to Nancy Simpson

I came to live in western NC in 1995 because my husband and I had always wanted to live in the mountains and near a body of water. Clay County was perfect for us. We found a house about a half mile from Lake Chatuge on the side of a mountain. Our view included the blue waters of the lake and the Georgia mountains on the far side. In fact we could look at Brasstown Bald the highest point in Georgia while we ate our breakfast each morning.

I did not expect my life to take such a turn when we moved here, but thanks to Nancy Simpson, a special education teacher at the local school, who was program coordinator of the North Carolina Writers' Network West, I found what I had always wanted; a writing organization, friends who were writers, and a kind soul who taught writing to people like me.

Nancy taught a night class at the local community college and it was always full. I took her class over and over. She has a masters degree from Warren Wilson College. I took a poetry class she taught at the John C. Campbell Folk School, trembling at the thought of having to read my work out loud. But, she was gentle while helping us learn to write better poetry.

I had been writing since I was old enough to read and hold a pencil, but I had no confidence in myself. Thanks to Nancy I was soon submitting my poetry for publication. That was over two decades ago. Nancy was never too busy to help me polish a poem. She named my chapbook, Now Might as Well be Then, and I am delighted she chose that line from one of my poems as the title.

Nancy is having some health issues, and she can't read at Coffee with the Poets and Writers for our April meeting. April is Poetry Month and she usually is one of our featured poets. We look forward to her being back with us before long.

Another Clay County poet, Brenda Kay Ledford, was a student of Nancy Simpson in 1995 and she has published five books since then. She will read her poetry that speaks of her mountain heritage April 19th at Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC.

You can hear Brenda read in her unique voice in this interview on You Tube.




Our meeting begins at 10:30 a.m. on the third Wednesday of each month. We invite the public to attend and to bring original writing whether poetry or prose to share around our table.

NC Writers' Network-West sponsors this event. It is a program of the statewide NC Writer's Network. 
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to writers at all stages of development.

SNOW DID NOT STOP OUR BOOK SIGNING

Phillips and Lloyd books on the square in Hayesville, NC hosted a book signing last Saturday. The light snow in the morning did not deter the customers looking for Christmas gifts in this delightful store. My friends and  family enjoyed shopping. Elizabeth and Joe filled a table with holiday cookies and we drank a pot of their good coffee.

Don K., Barry's good friend, came by to pick up a copy of Now Might as Well be Then. Don and Barry sang together in the Methodist Church Choir and also in the men's chorus, Singing Disciples. Don has inherited Barry's favorite hand carved wooden cane that he used for a short while.

From left: Janice Moore, author of Teaching the Robins, Karen Holmes, editor and publisher of the Netwest Newsletter, Award winning poet, Brenda Kay Ledford, Jo Carolyn Beebe, geneologist and writer, and Carole Thompson, poet and fiction writer all have work in the new anthology, CLOTHES LINES, edited by Celia Miles and Nancy Dillingham. They had fun and enjoyed signing both Christmas Presence, published last year by Catawba Publishing and Clothes Lines at Phillips and Lloyd books on Saturday, December 7.