Never too late - Make your change today!

In May 1995, Barry and I moved to Hayesville, NC having no idea how our lives would change.

A few months later, I would meet Nancy Simpson on the phone after I registered for membership in the North Carolina Writers' Network. She invited me to take the poetry class she taught at the John C. Campbell Folk School.

I had not planned to take a writing class, especially not poetry, but had hoped I could learn more about writing in North Carolina from the quarterly newsletter mailed to me by NC Writers' Network. I knew nothing about the folk school which was only a twenty-minute drive from my new home in the mountains.

Although I had been writing most of my life starting with stories in high school and a poem or two in class. My English teacher liked a poem I turned in for an assignment, and told me I should submit it to a magazine. That was all I was told and since I had no idea what magazine might accept my poem, I did nothing with it and was pleased she thought I had written something worthy of publication.

I had not shared my writing with anyone and did not know if I could write or not.

But Nancy talked me into taking her class. "It's free," she said. "I'm offering you a scholarship." Nancy had seen my name on a list of new members of  NCWN-West, a program she headed and helped create in the far western part of the state.

How could I possibly turn down such an invitation? Nervous and self-conscious, I attended the first class. It was taught in the Orchard House, one of the old farmhouses on the campus that served as a dormitory for students and also classrooms for writers and photographers. I fell in love with the living room right away. We sat on a sofa and overstuffed chairs as well as plain wood straight chairs. I immediately felt at home.

That day, that class, that place, and Nancy Simpson changed my life completely.

That was my first writing class but not my last. I registered for many classes at the folk school with great teachers who came from other places in North Carolina and from other states. Nancy knew so many writers and she invited them to come to John C. Campbell Folk School to teach.

Because I was a local resident and didn't require sleeping quarters, my tuition was discounted. That was the reason I could afford to take classes there. I began publishing my work the next year after taking classes and joining the network. As years passed, I began teaching beginning writers sharing what I had learned.

Nancy Simpson was the Writer in Residence at the folk school. She called me one day and asked if I would teach a weekend class. The original instructor had to cancel.

The day I turned the lock and walked into a classroom to teach for the first time at the folk school, I almost wept with gratitude. I will always remember the students who came and who were disappointed that the instructor who was originally listed for that weekend, was not coming. 

But the evaluation sheets handed in after class gave me high praise for knowing my subject well and all seemed very satisfied with my class. I knew another door had been opened for me. Soon I was teaching a weeklong class every year at JCCFS and teaching adult education for writers in the local junior college.

My first weeklong class taught at John C. Campbell Folk School

If you like to write and want to further your education in writing poetry or prose, fiction or nonfiction, I urge you to start with classes at the John C. Campbell Folk School.  You will never regret it.

See this information from the folk school website:

https://www.folkschool.org/find-a-class/writing/

Local Discount Program Information

For Our Neighbors:

The Folk School is proud to offer 25% off tuition and a guaranteed spot upon registration to people living in the following counties:

North Carolina: Cherokee, Clay, Macon, Swain, and Graham
Georgia: Fannin, Towns, Union
Tennessee: Polk

Those looking to receive this benefit are required to present one of the following, showing proof of local address: a valid driver’s license, voter registration card, tax bill, or utility bill.

NCWN West Presents These Events for 2020

Winter is a time we writers often hunker down, spend more time writing, submitting our work and planning for the coming year. In our area, we resume several of our writing events in March when the weather is more predictable. The critique groups continue year round, but it is not fair to a writer to have them plan for a reading or for teaching a class when the unpredictable weather might prevent anyone from attending.  

As Program Coordinator, I and volunteers work on a schedule of writers and poets for our Literary Hour at the John C. Campbell Folk School. This year from April to October, the NC Writers' Network West brings two of its more than 100 members in western NC and North Georgia to the stage at the Keith House Community Room. Students and faculty of the school and local community residents attend these programs. We feature published writers and poets as well as newer writers who enjoy the warm welcome of the folk school audiences. We include the audience by having them introduce themselves or by having them participate with questions for the writers.

Also beginning in March is Coffee with the Poets and Writers held monthly at the Moss Memorial Library in Hayesville, NC. We began this event in 2007 at Phillips and Lloyd Bookshop, and it is still a favorite. The attendance continues to grow. The Open Mic portion each month is open to anyone who wants to bring a poem or short prose piece. Featured are members of NC Writers' Network.

Nearly a decade ago, Karen Holmes who lives in Hiawassee and in Atlanta, attended a Writers Workshop in Blairsville, GA, sponsored by NCWN-West. She was impressed and became a member. After attending critique groups and readings for awhile, Karen created Writers' Night Out, a monthly gathering of writers set in north Georgia. She invited outstanding authors and poets from Atlanta and paired them with local writers each month. Many of those who traveled up from the city, stayed over and taught classes at Writers Circle around the Table. We were given the chance to meet and study with Robert Brewer, poetry editor of Writers' Digest and Michael Diebert, poetry editor of the Chattahoochee Review. Because of this event hosted by Karen Holmes, award winning poet, local writers met, learned and networked with people of influence in the literary world.

All of these events are sponsored by NCWN-West, a program of the state organization for the mountain community of western North Carolina and north Georgia. Since 1990 the writing community in the mountains has grown and NCWN-West now has a membership of 130.  The state organization receives support from the NC Arts Council and is a non-profit organization, therefore, we as a program, are also non-profit.

In the past two decades we have published anthologies, Lights in the Mountains and Echoes across the Blue Ridge, with work by mountain writers, held annual conferences and appointed representatives for NCWN-West who hold meetings for writers in counties from Henderson to Cherokee and in Towns and Union Counties in Georgia.

Over the years, small, individual groups of writers were spawned from the NCWN West monthly free events, but most professional writers become members of NCWN and therefore, NCWN-West. Members will tell you how helpful it has been to their success to be a part of the organization. From connections to top editors as well as contests for poetry and prose writers,        membership has something for all writers.

Writing is a solitary art, but when we come together in our writing community we don't feel alone and we learn from each other. 

The Squire Summer Writing Residency in Greenville in July

The Squire Summer Writing Residency will be an exciting place for writers to be in July. This is a long weekend of intensive workships with accomplished instructors, group events such as readings and discussions. Those attending will have an opportunity to share work with dedicated writers and the chance to bond with writers from across the state of NC and beyond. 

 Participation is limited to the first sixteen qualified registrants in each workshop, for a total of forty-eight attendees. 

Participants will sign up for one workshop for the weekend. The instructors are highly qualified and I'm sure anyone who attends will be overjoyed with their time there. 

GREENVILLE—Registration is now open for the North Carolina Writers' Network 2015 Squire Summer Writing Residency.

The Residency runs Thursday, July 23, through Sunday, July 26, at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. 

Wish I could go. If you, my readers, go to Greenville for this weekend, please let me know what it is like and what you think of it.

http://www.ncwriters.org/2014-01-07-18-35-09/network-news/6642-sr15

Read the call to action on NCWN blog

Because I care about funding for arts in North Carolina, I suggest that my NC readers go to this site: http://www.ncwriters.org/whitecross/

See how you can help. The NC Arts Council funds NCWN which funds NCWN West (Netwest). 

We need to urge our state senators to meet the budget proposed by the House.

All the information needed is on this site:

http://www.ncwriters.org/whitecross/

Thank you.

NCWN's Squire Summer Writing Residency July 11-14 in Western NC

2013 Squire Summer Writing Residency will be July 11–14 on the campus of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee.

The Squire Summer Writing Residency is the Network’s smallest and most intensive conference. Admission is limited to the first fifty registrants who sign up for one of three three-day workshops:

• Poetry with Kathryn Stripling Byer, North Carolina’s first woman Poet Laureate. Byer has published six full-length collections of poetry, including Descent (LSU Press, 2012), her most recent. A re-print of her first, the AWP Award-winning The Girl in the Midst of the Harvest, is forthcoming from Press 53. Her work has appeared in many journals and newspapers, including The Atlantic, Hudson Review, Boston Globe, and Georgia Review.

• Fiction with Elizabeth Lutyens. Lutyens returned to her native North Carolina after a career in the Boston area as a journalist in print and television. Her novel-in-progress, Medicine Island, was a semi-finalist in the 2011 William Faulkner – Wisdom Competition. A faculty member of the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC Asheville since 2006, she currently teaches its by-invitation Prose Master Class and is editor-in-chief of its online literary magazine, The Great Smokies Review.

• Creative Nonfiction with Catherine Reid. Reid is the author of Coyote: Seeking the Hunter in Our Midst (Houghton Mifflin) and Falling into Place (forthcoming from Beacon Press); she has also edited two anthologies and served as editor of nonfiction for a literary journal. Her essays have appeared in such journals as Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Fourth Genre, and Bellevue Literary Review. She is currently the director of creative writing at Warren Wilson College, where she specializes in literary nonfiction and environmental writing.

The Residency will begin on Thursday evening, July 11, with registration and check-in. Workshops begin on Friday morning, July 12, and continue until the early afternoon of July 14. The Residency will also feature panel discussions and readings by faculty and attendees.

Registrants also will enjoy meals together and have the option of staying overnight in on-campus accommodations.

“The small class sizes and extended, intensive format of the Squire Summer Writing Residency makes it especially safe for writers to share their work, get to know other writers, and find inspiration,” NCWN executive director Ed Southern said.

Registration is available online at www.ncwriters.org or by calling 336-293-8844.

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. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.

Mary Ricketson and Nadine Justice will read at JCCFS Thursday night

JOHN C. CAMPBELL FOLK SCHOOL

Mary Ricketson, Poet and writer

              On Thursday, February 21, 2013,  John Campbell Folk School  and  NC Writers Network West sponsor the monthly reading in the Keith House by members of NCWN. The reading is free of charge and open to the public.  Poets Mary Ricketson and writer, Nadine Justice will be the featured readers.  

Mary Ricketson’s poetry has been published in her chapbook, I Hear the River Call My Name, Lights in the Mountains, Freeing Jonah IV, Freeing Johah V, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Future Cycle Press,Your Daily Poem, Journal of Kentucky Studies, various magazines and in Disorgananza, a private collection distributed among family and friends.  She won the gold medal for poetry in the 2011 Cherokee County Senior Games/Silver Arts.  She won first place in the 2011 Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest national poetry contest.

Mary writes a monthly column, Woman to Woman, for The Cherokee Scout.  She is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network, a mental health counselor, and a farmer.

Mary says she writes to satisfy a hunger, to taste life all the way down to the last drop.  She gains perspective from family and friends, her Appalachian home, and her life’s work as a counselor.

Writing poetry places her in kinship with her own life.

Mary Ricketson is a Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor in Murphy, North Carolina.  She brings more than thirty years experience to her work, with twenty-five years in private practice.  She is a founding board member of  REACH.  She has a special interest in women’s issues, victims of abuse, and family and couple relationships.  She offers innovative ways to effect change in difficult life patterns, including Journey to Intuition and Neurofeedback.  She is listed in Who’s Who in American Women.

Nadine Justice

Nadine Justice divides her time between a mountain-top cottage in north Georgia and her home in Atlanta. For the past few years she has worked on a memoir which was published last year. Excerpts have been published in an anthology by the Georgia Mountain Writers Club. She also enjoys a successful career as an interior designer. Her design work has been featured twice in Better Homes and Gardens and in Atlanta Custom Home magazines.

Nadine grew up in West Virginia and is the daughter of a coal miner. She is married to a retired federal agent, and enjoys spending time with her four “perfect” grandchildren.

Nadine is a new member of the North Carolina Writers' Network. She will share portions of her book, I'm a coal Miner's Daughter, But I Cain't Sang, at the reading on Thursday night. 

Hollywood found Ron Rash

Many of us here in the mountains are fans of Ron Rash, author of many best sellers, but his book, Serena, caught the eyes of Hollywood.
I read on the NCWN blog, Whitecross School, that the movie is being made in Asheville.
Here is the link.

http://www.ncwriters.org/whitecross/2012/02/06/serena-coming-to-the-big-screen/