Schedule 2008-2009

Meetings September through May

Work in Progress 

NEW PROGRAMS TO BE ANNOUNCED IN AUGUST 2008

 

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May 20, 2008

Learn the Art of Writing About History

Historian W. Eric Emerson will be the final speaker for the Charlotte Writers’ Club before its summer break. His topic will be "Researching and Writing History and Genealogy," at 7 p.m., May 20, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, SouthPark.

He will talk about the process of writing history, including where and how to find source materials and the benefits and challenges of using genealogy.

Born in Charlotte and reared in Asheville, he has Tar Heel roots going back to the Revoutionary era. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a degree in history, he earned both master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Alabama.

Currently executive director of the Charleston (S.C.) Library Society, he also has served as a director of the South Carolina and Maryland Historical Societies and as editor of the South Carolina Historical Magazine. He, his wife Cathy, and their two daughters live on Daniel Island, S.C.

His book, Sons of Privilege: The Charleston Light Dragoons and the Civil War, is also the topic of his doctoral dissertation.

Of this book, Amazon.com says, "Sons of Privilege traces the wartime experiences of a unique Confederate cavalry company drawn together from South Carolina’s most prestigious families of planters, merchants, and politicos. Founded in 1797 as a city militia unit, the Charleston Light Dragoons drew from such locally recognizable clans as the Hugers, Izards, Manigaults, Middletons, and Pringles. W. Eric Emerson examines the military exploits of this ‘company of gentlemen’ to find that the elite status of its membership dictated the terms of their service.

"For much of the war, the dragoons were stationed close to home and faced little immediate danger. As the South’s resources waned, however, such deference faded. . .Recounting the unit’s 1864 baptism by fire at the Battle of Haw’s Shop, he suggests that the dragoon’s unrealistic expectations about their military prowess led the men to fight with more bravery than discretion. Thus the unit suffered heavy losses, and by 1865 only a handful survived.

"Emerson tracks the return of the survivors to ruined homes and businesses, the struggle to rebuild lost fortunes, and the resurrection of exclusive social organizations that would separate them from Charleston’s more prosperous newcomers..."

J. Tracy Power, author of Lee’s Miserables: Life in the Army of Northern Virginia from the Wilderness to Appomattox, comments, "Sons of Privilege blends social, economic, political, and military history to paint a sophisticated portrait of a unique company whose officers and men were so concerned with notions of status, wealth, and the concept of honor that these ideas shaped both its Confederate service and the ways in which the unit chose to remember it after the war."

Emerson is working on a new book titled, The Civil War Correspondence of William Porter DuBose.

 

 

April 15, 2008

Bowers Weaves a Life Tapestry in Poetry

Using both exacting form and free verse in narrative and lyric poems, Cathy Smith Bowers brings her lovely and compelling voice to the April CWC program. It is National Poetry Month and we are very fortunate to have national poet Smith Bowers returning to Charlotte to celebrate the beauty and power of poetry with us on Tuesday, April 15^th at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 7:00 p.m.

            Cathy Smith Bowers writes from life experiences – the good, the bad, the ugly, and the lovely -- with a lyrical style that contains story, song and moving compassion. Her poems captivate and inspire. She understands the use of finely crafted lines. She also says that sound and sense ultimately rule her writing heart. Still a delicate dance with form can be seen and felt in her work, especially in the tight “minute” forms of her most recent book, A Book of Minutes. Smith Bowers plans to read from this book and from her forthcoming book, The Candle I Hold Up to See You. She will discuss how the poems from these two collections differ from each other and how story is revealed in both.     .

One of six children, Cathy Smith Bowers was born and reared in the small mill town of Lancaster, SC. She received her BA and MAT in English at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, SC. She went on to do graduate work in Modern British Poetry at Oxford University in England.

Cathy Smith Bowers’ poems have appeared widely in publications such as The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and The Kenyon Review. She is a winner of The General Electric Award for Younger Writers, recipient of a South Carolina Poetry Fellowship, and winner of The South Carolina Arts Commission

 Fiction Project. She served for many years as poet-in-residence at Queens University of

Charlotte where she received the 2002 JB Fuqua Distinguished Educator Award. She now teaches in the Queens low-residency MFA In Creative Writing Program. Her craft essay “A Moment of Intensity” is featured in the 2007 edition of Poet’s Market.

Of Traveling in Time of Danger, Smith Bowers’ second collection of poems, Poet Jane Hirshfield says, “Cathy Smith Bowers’ new book possesses a sensuous intelligence, a tongue both observant and precise, a brave and vulnerable heart. Bowers brings to the page powerful grief-stories, the witness of fully open eyes. Reading her poems, I find myself instructed, awakened, and moved.”

            Cathy Smith Bowers does private consultation and teaches at writers’ conferences throughout the United States and in Canada. Her collections include The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas, Texas Tech University Press, 1992; Traveling in Time of Danger, Iris Press, 1997; and A Book of Minutes, Iris Press, 2004. Her fourth collection , The Candle I Hold Up to See You, is forthcoming in Spring 2008, also from Iris Press. Cathy hides out in the Appalachian foothill town of Tryon, NC, with her gifted and talented Border collie, Manna.

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March 18, 2008

Dr. Robert Fulton

Come to the Charlotte Writers Club meeting on March 18^th and hear how life’s twists and turns led Dr. Robert Fulton to where he is today.  An author, naturalist, photographer, teacher and editor- he’s combined many of his personal interests in novel ways.  Find out how he combined interests and how he fits into the publishing scheme of things at the next meeting of the Charlotte Writers Club at Joseph Beth Booksellers at 7pm, March 18^th.

His book, But…You Know What I mean shares with writers what it’s like from an editor’s point of view.  He shares from his wealth of experience as an editor with information such as:  the editing process, grammar and punctuation, writing a query letter, finding the appropriate medium and the importance of networking.

Dr. Fulton’s stories and photos have appeared in Reader’s Digest, North Carolina Sportsman, Florida Outdoors Magazine, and Coastal Elegance Magazine.  He is also an outdoor columnist for The Enquirer-Journal. 

Receiving the Florida Outdoor Writers “Excellence in Craft Award” and the Florida Writers Association’s “Royal Palm Literary Award” endorses the quality of his writing. An avid outdoorsman, Dr. Fulton has participated in the Ivory-billed Woodpecker search in the Congaree Swamp of South Carolina; two weeks with Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology in Arkansas’s Bayou de View; and with advice from Auburn, a week along the Choctawhatchee River in NW Florida.  These experiences and a life in the outdoors prompted his latest book, Swamp Drifter from Palmland Publishing.

 

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Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 7 p.m. on Tuesday, February 19^th

Multi-genred Writer Svoboda To Speak In February

 

Davidson College’s 2008 McGee Professor, Terese Svoboda is a master of many forms of writing: novels, poems, essays, plays, translations and more. At our next meeting, Svoboda plans some short readings from several of her prize-winning books in different genres and will discuss how they relate and inform her impressive creativity. Bloomsbury Review says, “There are writers you would be tempted to read regardless of the setting or period or the plot or even the genre. … Terese Svoboda is one of those writers.”

In 2007 Svoboda won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize for Black Glasses Like Clark Kent, a memoir about her uncle as an MP who reported executions of GIs in the stockade he was guarding in postwar Japan – then committed suicide. This book is described by Robert Polito as a family romance in the guise of a biography and memoir, a mystery in the spirit of writers as various as Dashiell Hammett and Patricia Highsmith, a triptych that spans World War II Japan and contemporary America, creating imaginative space for the lives of the author’s uncle and cousin as well as her own.  Phillip Lopate says: “… such is the honesty, humor and literary skill of Terese Svoboda that she manages to turn this sad story into a triumph of compassion and insight.”

A year before obtaining her M.F.A., Svoboda traveled to the Sudan and lived with the Nuer people. En route, she lived in the Cook Islands for 6 months and translated songs of native peoples. Her experiences in the Sudan inform both her 2^nd book of poetry, Laughing Africa, winner or the University of Iowa Prize, and her first novel, Cannibal. She spent 15 years writing Cannibal, which Vogue called “a woman’s Heart of Darkness.” As result of her work abroad, Svoboda often focuses on subjects beyond American experience. But often, such as in the short fiction, Trailer Girl and Other Stories , returns – as most authors do, eventually – home to Nebraska, with a novella about a wild child who hides in a herd of cattle.

Interested in the current dichotomy between lyric and language, Svoboda’s 4 collections of poems are written in both form and free verse. Her most recent book of poems, Treason, concerns betrayal: child to parent, wife to husband, a nation to its people. Elinor Wilner writes: “Cool, wry surface: depth charge of cry, of outrage, language at the edge of utterance, utterly original…”    

Film proposals are among our speaker’s credits and she has joined ranks with the new video makers, creating poetry videos and documentaries shown on PBS, internationally and at the MOMA and the Getty. When not teaching, Svoboda, who lives in NYC, writes proposals for new technology.

Please join us at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, 7 p.m. on Tuesday, February 19^th to meet and hear the intriguing, multi-talented writer and teacher, Terese Svoboda.

 

 

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January 15, 2008 7 PM

Abbott Will Speak on Stages of Revision in a Novel

 

           Anthony Abbott, known to many CWC members as Tony, friend and mentor, has given many hours over the years to our club. On Tuesday, January 15^th, he will be with us again, this time as featured speaker. Tony will lead a discussion on the evolution of his second novel, The Three Great Secret Things. He will show through a series of revisions brought about by the editing process, how his work progressed. He plans to use handouts to illustrate the reasons for particular revisions. This promises to be an interesting, enjoyable evening, starting at 7p.m. at Joseph-Beth Booksellers.

Tony is the author of 4 books of poetry, 2 novels and 2 critical studies, Shaw and Christianity (1965) and The Vital Lie: Reality and Illusion in Modern Drama (1989). His poems have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. Tony’s first book of poems, The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat, St. Andrews Press, 1989, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His second poetry collection was A Small Thing Like A Breath, St. Andrews Press, 1993, and his third was The Search for Wonder in the Cradle of the World, 2000. In 2003 his first novel, Leaving Maggie Hope, won the Novello Award and was published by Novello Festival Press. The novel won the "Gold Award" from Foreword Magazine in literary fiction. His second novel, The Three Great Secret Things, a sequel to Leaving Maggie Hope, was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Co. in November of this year.

His most recent collection of poems is The Man Who, published by Main Street Rag Publishing Co. in 2005.  It won the Oscar Arnold Young Award of the N.C. Poetry Council for the best book of poems by a North Carolinian in 2005.

            Tony Abbott was born in San Francisco. He received his A.B. from Princeton University, Magna cum laude, in 1957. He received his A.M. from Harvard University in 1960 and his Ph.D. in 1962. In 1964 he became Assistant Professor of English at Davidson College. Promoted to Full Professor in 1979, Tony was named Charles A. Dana Professor of English in 1990. He served as Chair of the Department from 1989 to 1996 and was honored with the Thomas Jefferson Award in 1969, the Hunter-Hamilton Love of Teaching Award in 1997.

Tony has lectured widely to both church and secular groups in both Carolinas on "Three Contemporary American Prophets: Flannery O'Connor, Frederick Buechner, and Walker Percy.” For the spring semester of 2007 he served as the Writer-in-Residence at Lenoir Rhyne College in Hickory, NC.

He is past president of the Charlotte Writers' Club and the North Carolina Writer’s Network and also past Chairman of the North Carolina Writer’s Conference. In 1996 he was honored by St. Andrews College with the Sam Ragan Award for his writing and his service to the literary community of North Carolina.

Tony is married to the former Susan Dudley of South Orange, NJ. They have three sons and seven grandchildren, all of whom he enjoys immensely.

 

 

 

Margaret Bigger - Guest Speaker, December 11th

YOU Can Write an ‘As Told To’

Don't you have a story to tell? How about writing it down? Too many stories get lost in the telling and are never put down in black and white.

Author and editor Margaret Bigger knows how to help you write your story. She is a favorite of Charlotte Writers’ Club members and others who have enjoyed reading her books, taking her classes, and working with her on "as told to" books. Her contributions to writers and readers are numerous and varied.

She will bring her talents as an author and editor to Joseph-Beth Booksellers at 7 p.m. Tuesday, December 11.

Margaret Bigger specializes in two genres: as an author, she writes true anecdotes on numerous humorous topics. As an editor, she has worked with the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the Levine Museum of the New South and A. Borough Books for 10 years, editing anthologies of history-from-life-experience told by the people who lived it. Her career began and is ending with "as told to’s."

Since 1989, Margaret has taught "Recalling Memories for Posterity" through Queens University, Shepherd’s Center, Central Piedmont Community College, Elderhostel and numerous retirement homes in three states.

In recent years, her six-week writing course has been a Charlotte Writers’ Club annual fund-raiser, very popular and productive for all who participated. In the coming year, Bigger will teach this class Wednesday afternoons, 2-4, January 23 – February 27, at Christ Episcopal Church, 1412 Providence Road.

Best known for her wedding humor books, Margaret has appeared on 11 national TV talk shows, such as Maury Povich, Sally Jessy Raphael and EXTRA. She also has been on no less than 60 regional TV news shows as well as more than 450 radio broadcasts nationwide, including NPR's "Talk of the Nation."

Margaret Bigger has been a CWC member since 1991. In 1997, she received the Aline Thompson Service Award. She presently serves on the Advisory Board.

She has also served the greater Charlotte community for many years. In 1984, she received a Black Media Award for a series of articles she wrote for the Charlotte News about outstanding local African-Americans. In 1997, The Charlotte Observer presented her with a plaque for her Hire-A-Kid series in Mecklenburg Neighbors. These were written while Margaret, for 25 years, was a full-time volunteer in an inner city church. Her articles have appeared in more than 200 publications, including Family Circle, USA Today, Ford Times, and more recently she has contributed to six Guideposts Books in the Let There Be Laughter series.

For the CWC program in December, Margaret will emphasize her first book, Only Forty Miles of Pavement, an "as told to" done with her father. Many of us might wish we had captured our father’s and others’ stories as Margaret did. It may not be too late.

To register for Margaret’s classes, call her at 704 364-1788. Cost is $60 for CWC members and $72 for others.. Optional text, $14. Spread the word to friends.

 

Fall Schedule

November 20

Miriam Herin, 2007 Novello Winner

WINNER OF THE 2007 NOVELLO LITERARY AWARD, MIRIAM HERIN, WILL SPEAK AT THE NOVEMBER MEETING OF THE CHARLOTTE WRITERS CLUB

 Please join us for the Charlotte Writers Club meeting on November 20th to hear Miriam Herin discuss her award-winning novel, Absolution.  Her novel has been awarded the 2007 Novello Literary award.

Absolution is the story of Maggie Delaney, an idealistic wife and mother whose world implodes when her husband Richard is murdered in a botched convenience store robbery. To her horror, Maggie learns the shooting may not have been an accident.

When she attempts to find out what really happened, her search leads her back to her Carolina roots and through the streets of 1960s New York and modern-day Boston.  Maggie retraces the steps of a generation that came of age in the 1960s when the world was embroiled in conflict.

Then, as the murder trial draws near, disturbing questions arise about Richard and his possible role in military atrocities. Finally, in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Maggie will uncover a legacy of secrets about the man she thought she knew – and the troubled world they shared.

"In this fierce and impressive debut, Miriam Herin asks us to open our eyes wide to the hopes, failure, compassion, and cruelty of life.  Absolution ventures deep into the human psyche.  Remarkable in scope, the story takes us from Boston to Vietnam and back, a journey that is unsettling – at times, harrowing – but unquestionably spellbinding the whole way.  I urge you to read this book."                     

                                   -- Judy Goldman

 

Miriam Herin was born in Miami, Florida, and grew up imagining white Christmases and a house like Jo March’s in Little Women. At age six, enthralled by the story of Bambi, she decided to become a writer. This wasn’t Walt Disney’s Bambi, but Felix Salten’s original children’s story about death in the forest, the perils of coming of age, the triumph of the spirit over fear. That was the type of story Miriam wanted to write.

When she was fourteen, her family moved to Arlington, Virginia, where she found her white Christmases. But the dream of writing was deferred. She finished college and sampled graduate school in English, signed up for the LSAT but never took it, applied to graduate school in social work, applied to a theological seminary, actually held a job as a social worker in a children’s home and ended up back in graduate school in English. Eventually, she earned a Master’s and a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Carolina. While there, she discovered a love for teaching literature and believed then that she had found her life.

She taught at Limestone College in South Carolina before moving to New York City to marry a Methodist minister. In New York, she worked as an editorial assistant for Good Housekeeping Magazine and taught English at Essex County College in Newark, New Jersey. When she and her husband moved to North Carolina, she taught at Appalachian State University and Greensboro College as a part-time Assistant Professor of English, while raising two children. She also worked briefly on the copy desk of the Winston-Salem Journal.  

When the family moved to Charlotte, she decided it was time to look again at her long-deferred childhood dream. She began writing fiction, won three statewide awards for stories, published several and started a novel. She also free-lanced as a writer, editor, producer and public relations consultant, focusing on film and video. She did work for such organizations as the American Institute of Architects, the Minnesota Institute of Architects, First Union National Bank (now Wachovia), Ruddick Corporation, Bell South, the United Methodist Church in the Southeast and in Western North Carolina and the Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. Freelancing led to a variety of adventures: hauling video equipment up Israeli hills, an all-night shoot at Maggie Valley’s Ghost Town attraction, filming in the Asheville jail and the Salisbury penitentiary and assembling Indians, Mountain Men, actors, extras, horses, wagons and a goat for three television spots for the United Methodist Church that went on to win two of the advertising industry’s Addy Awards. In Charlotte, she volunteered her time to develop and coordinate a program for Southeast Asian teenagers, whose families were refugees from the Vietnam War.  

Miriam presently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with her husband. Their children are adults and Miriam will soon be a grandmother. When she is not writing, she remains passionately engaged with the things of this world that she loves: her family, friends, books, movies, plays, music, travel, hiking, cooking, spirited conversation, Duke basketball and a place in Mississippi called Turkey Creek.

 Absolution is her first novel.

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October 16, 2007 - Simone Orendain

Have you ever wondered about the commentaries you hear on WFAE, our local NPR station?  Do you think you have to have a degree in journalism or on air radio experience to record one?  That’s not the case at all.

 Come to the Charlotte Writers Club meeting on October 16^th at 7 pm and meet Simone Orendain, a staff reporter for the station.  She will tell you about how to submit a short written piece for a possible commentary and about the process for recording one.  Yes, the microphone does look a bit like a foam covered grapefruit and yes, it can be a bit intimidating the first time, but it’s also a lot of fun. 

 Simone Orendain came to WFAE nearly three years ago from a small public radio station in DeKalb, IL where she was a host and reporter for more than three years.  Simone started in public radio as a news intern at Chicago Public Radio, where she worked her way up to part time news writer, later departing for full time reporting work in DeKalb.  She also wrote news at WGN AM, Chicago's number one news/talk station.  She has an MA in Public Affairs Journalism (print) from Columbia College in Chicago.  Apart from thoroughly enjoying reporting at WFAE, Simone really likes editing commentaries and looks forward to your submissions!

 Please join us on Tuesday, October 16^th at Joseph Beth Booksellers and find out if there’s a commentary within you just waiting to be written.

 

WINNER OF THE 2007 NOVELLO LITERARY AWARD, MIRIAM HERIN, WILL SPEAK AT THE NOVEMBER MEETING OF THE CHARLOTTE WRITERS CLUB

Please join us for the Charlotte Writers Club meeting on November 20th to hear Miriam Herin discuss her award-winning novel, Absolution.  Her novel has been awarded the 2007 Novello Literary award.

Absolution is the story of Maggie Delaney, an idealistic wife and mother whose world implodes when her husband Richard is murdered in a botched convenience store robbery. To her horror, Maggie learns the shooting may not have been an accident.

When she attempts to find out what really happened, her search leads her back to her Carolina roots and through the streets of 1960s New York and modern-day Boston.  Maggie retraces the steps of a generation that came of age in the 1960s when the world was embroiled in conflict.

Then, as the murder trial draws near, disturbing questions arise about Richard and his possible role in military atrocities. Finally, in the jungles of Southeast Asia, Maggie will uncover a legacy of secrets about the man she thought she knew – and the troubled world they shared.  

"In this fierce and impressive debut, Miriam Herin asks us to open our eyes wide to the hopes, failure, compassion, and cruelty of life.  Absolution ventures deep into the human psyche.  Remarkable in scope, the story takes us from Boston to Vietnam and back, a journey that is unsettling – at times, harrowing – but unquestionably spellbinding the whole way.  I urge you to read this book."                           

                                   -- Judy Goldman

 

 

 

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Novelist Karon Luddy Discusses “Point of View”

 On September 18^th at 7:00p.m., Karon Luddy will call us back together at Joseph-Beth’s Booksellers. She will read from her first novel, Spelldown, and delve into “point of view,” which she considers the living center of life and literature—the stuff of our everyday lives. She will also talk about the process of writing and publishing a first novel.

        In January of this year, Simon and Schuster published Karon Luddy’s Spelldown. This “coming of age” story has received accolades from Parent’s Choice Award Review, Kirkus Review and others. Creative Loafing described the novel as “a great book for parents and children to read together.” Publishers Weekly called it “funny and heartrending—an applause-worthy work of fiction.” School Library Journal said, “It celebrates the music of the era, the flavor of the south, and the magic of words to empower young people.”

            Karon Luddy’s love affair with words began at an early age. In first grade she met twenty-six lifelong friends—letters big and small. In an essay she wrote for the South Carolina Review, Luddy says one of the reasons she writes is to honor silence. She views silence as the original text, the glue that holds language together, a third party to every conversation.

              Luddy, a Charlotte author and educator, was born in Lancaster, S.C. She has lived in Charlotte for three decades, working in sales and marketing. She left the corporate world to spend time with her family and to write. South Carolina Review published her first short story in 2002. She was a finalist in the 2000 Novello Festival Press Literary Award. In May, 2005, Luddy received her MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University as well as a book contract for her first novel. In May, 2007, Clemson University Digital Press published Wolf Heart, Luddy’s first book of poetry.

Luddy has taught at UNC-Charlotte as an adjunct professor. She will be teaching a class this fall in the American Studies Department. The title of the course is “Growing Up Southern.”

The novel, Spelldown, is told in the compelling voice of an infectious adolescent, Karlene, who adores words and becomes a winning speller, moving into the exciting world of spelling competitions... Luddy says her main character surprises and inspires her. The book also gives Luddy the opportunity to write about alcoholism—especially the recovery process where miracles happen all the time. Karlene speaks in the present tense without the author controlling the strong-minded girl’s voice. Which is a treat for the reader.  

            Karon Luddy says, “Writing a novel is a tedious process that requires patience and confidence—which are not my strongest points. It’s a nerve-wracking business, but someone has to do it.”

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May 15, 2007 - RANDY NELSON - To Discuss "THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE SHORT STORY"

            Randy F. Nelson, the winner of the 2006 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, wrote this about his undergraduate years at N.C. State University: “I was a poor student of architecture, my original major, but at State’s School of Design I did learn the value of what was called an “elegant solution”—one that used up all available materials in a beautiful, simple, original design and that allowed no excess.”

            In his talk to the Charlotte Writers Club on Tuesday May 15, at 7 pm at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Nelson will discuss how these same principles can be applied to the writing of short fiction. He humorously entitled his talk, “What I Learned in Architecture School,” and what he learned should prove to be extremely useful and interesting to every writer, especially to writers of short stories. 

            Nelson is the Virginia Lasater Irvin Professor of English at Davidson College, where he teaches courses in nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction, and in the writing of fiction. He is a native of Mooresville, NC, where he learned the nursery business from his father and the flower business from his mother. He graduated from N.C. State with a major in English in 1970 and received his M.A. in 1972. After a short stint in the army, he returned to graduate school, receiving his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1976. He began teaching at Davidson in 1976 and, as he says, “for sins I can’t quite recall, was eventually punished with an appointment as department chair.” 

            Nelson’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines and reviews including Gettysburg Review, North American Review, Kenyon Review, Story, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Shenandoah, Northwest Review, and Seattle Review. He is the winner of the Carson McCullers Award at Story, the Frank O’Connor Award for short fiction, and, in 2006, the Flannery O’Connor Award for his collection, The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men, published by the University of Georgia Press. 

            Nelson married his high school sweetheart, and together they raised three sons. In addition to teaching and writing Nelson has been, in his own words, “a lifeguard, a textile mill worker, a solider, a garbage collector, a serious bonsai hobbyist, and a fair carpenter and wood turner.” He has also coached Little League baseball and soccer. He is currently working on a second collection of short stories. 

 

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FULLER AND FLYNN TO SPEAK FOR NATIONAL POETRY MONTH     

Janice Fuller  

            Because of the unexpected withdrawal of N.C. Poet Laureate Kay Byer, as the April speaker for the Charlotte Writers Club, Janice Fuller of Salisbury and Keith Flynn of Asheville have generously agreed to replace her in representing the art of poetry for National Poetry Month at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in South Park on Tuesday, April 17, at 7 p.m. Fuller has just published a new book of poems, Séance, from Iris Press, and Flynn also has a new book of poems, The Golden Ratio, from Iris, in addition to a new collection of essays from Writer’s Digest Books, The Rhythm Method, Razzmatazz and Memory: How To Make Your Poetry Swing.  These books will be on sale after the meeting at Joseph-Beth, and the authors will be pleased to autograph them.  Fuller will talk about form in poetry, emphasizing the original forms she created for her new book. Flynn will talk about music and poetry, using material from his new book of essays. Both will also read from their new books.

            Both Janice Fuller and Keith Flynn are familiar to Writers Club members. Fuller is Writer-in-Residence and Professor of English at Catawba College, where she has been awarded the Swink Award for Outstanding Classroom Teaching and is a four time winner of the Teacher of the Year Award. She has published three poetry books---Archeology is a Destructive Science(Scots Plaid Press), Sex Education(Iris Press), and Séance. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, and her plays and libretti have been produced in theatres all over the world. She has been a fellow at the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Ireland for a number of years, and has also had grants from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. 

            Keith Flynn is the founder and managing editor of The Asheville Poetry Review, and is the author of four collections of poetry: The Talking Drum(1991), The Book of Monsters(1994), The Lost Sea(2000), and The Golden Ratio, just published. His poems have appreared in journals in the United States, Wales, and Ireland. He has been awarded the Sandburg Prize for Poetry, the Paumanok Poetry Award, and was twice named the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet for NC. From 1987 to 1998, he was lyricist and lead singer for the nationally acclaimed rock band, The Crystal Zoo.

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   HONEYCUTT ON THE WORLD OF FAIRY TALES

 

Once upon a time in the magical land of Writing there lived a fairy god-mother.  She wrote poems, stories, articles and fairy tales. She mentored other writers and literary festivals. Her name is Irene Blair Honeycutt and she continues to write and mentor to Charlotte’s literary community.

On March 20^th at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Honeycutt will cast her spell in a program on writing fairy tales. Her first children’s book, The Prince with the Golden Hair, a fairy tale for children of all ages (including the child within us), was published in the spring of 2006 by D-N Publishing. 

In addition to teaching writing courses -- creative writing, composition and literature -- at Central Piedmont Community College for 37 years, Honeycutt’s interest in mythology and classical fairy tales led her to teach classes on this subject at college levels and at the Haden Institute and is now teaching the genre in Centers for Lifelong Learning.  Her student, Sigrid Sacra will read to us from a fairytale myth created for a recent Queens’ class.

Honeycutt also leads writing workshops for business groups and at national conferences. Each fall Honeycutt offers a weekend writing retreat at Gates Studio in Burnsville, N.C. 

Honeycutt’s most recent book of poetry is entitled Waiting for the Trout to Speak, Novello Festival Press, 2002. Her first book of poetry, It Comes as a Dark Surprise, won Sandstone Publishing’s Regional Poetry Award in 1992 and entered its fourth printing. Honeycutt’s poems have appeared in national and regional anthologies and journals including Nimrod, Asheville Poetry Rev., Southern Poetry Rev., Croton Rev., Pembroke Magazine, The Arts

Journal, Iodine and many others, such as Main Street Rag, where she was the first Charlotte poet to be interviewed by the magazine in the 10^th Anniversary Issue, Fall, 2006.

In the interview, Honeycutt talks of the power of fairy tales to speak to us on a subconscious level and how we learn about ourselves and others by examining the archetypal patterns. She also mentions some of the mentors of her life, from her mother to Miroslav Holub with whom she studied in Prague when she was a recipient of a NC Arts Council Scholarship. Her many awards include Teaching Excellence Awards from CPCC in 1989, ’98 & ’99, and from Northwood University, Midland, MI in 1993.

In addition to writing and teaching, Honeycutt founded CPCC’s Annual Spring Literary Festival and was the Festival Director for 14 years. She retired in March of 2006. The college established “The Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lectureship” to honor her accomplishments in teaching and in directing the Festival.

Irene Honeycutt is a past president of CWC. We look forward to her joining us as our speaker on the rich tradition of fairy tales and the art of writing them.   

 

 

 

 

 

February 13, 2007 - Joseph-Beth Booksellers

DISTINGUISHED POET HENRI COLE FEBRUARY SPEAKER

The Charlotte Writers Club is honored to have as its February speaker the distinguished American poet, Henri Cole, whose volume of poems, Middle Earth, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His poems appear regularly in the best American journals, including The New Yorker, and he is currently the McGee Professor of Writing at Davidson College for the spring semester, 2007.

He will speak to the club on Tuesday, February 13 (note earlier date) at 7 p.m. at Joseph Beth Booksellers about his poetry with special emphasis on his different uses of the sonnet form. 

Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, and raised in Virginia. From 1982 to 1988 he was Executive Director of the Academy of American Poets. Since then he has held many teaching positions including the position of artist-in-residence at Brandeis, Columbia, Harvard and Yale Universities, and Smith College. He holds degrees from the College of William and Mary, the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and Columbia University. 

His six volumes of poetry include Middle Earth(2003), The Visible Man(1998), The Look of Things(1995) The Zoo Wheel of Knowledge(1989), and The Marble Queen(1986).  About Middle Earth, critic William Logan said, “This is the most intimate book in American poetry since Plath’s Ariel. . .Middle Earth escapes all the praise I can heap on it.”  The Visible Man, Logan said, “will remind readers of the confessions in Robert Lowell’s Life Studies. . .Most other books would be reduced to ashes by the comparison.”

Cole’s most recent awards and prizes include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005, and in 2004 the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Many of the poems in Middle Earth were written in Japan and Germany with the help of fellowships from the Japan-US Friendship Commission and from the American Academy in Berlin.

 

January 16, 2007 - Joseph-Beth Booksellers

Essayist Rebecca McClanahan on the Riddles of Remembering

         Charlotte Writers Club will kick off the new year at Joseph Beth Booksellers, 7:00 p.m. on January 16^th 2007 with Rebecca McClanahan as our program speaker. Her topic will be the way writers can use creative non-fiction to pose the questions and seek the answers of both the past and the present. We are delighted to be welcoming Rebecca back to her home city of past years where she has been and is, a much admired writer and teacher. She was the Director of Poetry-in-the-schools for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools from 1981 until 1995.

McClanahan weaves stories from the personal to the public, from the specific to the general so that her lyrical words form beautiful and compellingly realistic essays of family life. She will discuss the various uses of craft and deeply felt emotion to turn the riddle of the events in our lives and the lives of others into stories that all readers can relate to and be touched by. In her most recent book, The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings, McClanahan threads together a collection of memoir-based essays to create a meditation on family and those myths we live by. The mysteries that make up our days and the days of those around us are what McClanahan is drawn to write about and to explore, through words and the retelling of family stories. She will show us how ordinary experiences can be transformed into extraordinary ones through the use of language.

Rebecca McClanahan is the author of four volumes of poetry, most recently, Naked as Eve, and three books about writing, including Word Painting: A Guide to Writing More Descriptively. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The Best American Poetry, Ms. Magazine, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Boulevard and in numerous anthologies. It has also been aired on NPR’s “The Sound of Writing” and “Living on Earth” and on “The Writer’s Almanac.” Her many awards include a Pushcart Prize in fiction, the Wood Prize from Poetry magazine, a New York foundation for the Arts Fellowship in nonfiction, and twice, the Carter prize for the essay.

After 20 years of writing and teaching in Charlotte, McClanahan with her husband Donald Devet, founder of Grey Seal Puppets, acted on a decade-long, shared dream and moved to New York City in 1998. But she returns to Charlotte several times a year to visit family and teach in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University. She also teaches the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops and at the Hudson Valley Writers Center.

In 2007, Iris Press will publish Rebecca McClanahan’s Deep Light: New and Selected Poems, 1987-2007.  

Rebecca McClanahan's website: www.mcclanmuse.com

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December 12, 2006 - 7 p.m. Joseph-Beths Booksellers

Maureen Ryan Griffin and Students Spin Words into Gold

On December 12^th, the Charlotte Writers Club will celebrate the gift of words and how it inspires and empowers our lives. The leader for this 7 p.m. December meeting at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, South Park, is our own, Maureen Ryan Griffin, a Charlotte Writers Club member of many years.

 One of Charlotte’s finest and most beloved teachers, Griffin, and her students, including some of our club members, will discuss and read excepts from Griffin’s book, Spinning Words into Gold: A Hands On Guide to the Craft of Writing. This nurturing book was released this year from Main Street Rag Publishing Company.

An in depth source for all writers -- novice, emerging, or accomplished--Spinning Words       into Gold  is a rich mother lode of information, examples, and exercises regarding the Whos, Whys, Whats, Whens, Wheres and Hows of all writing, whether it be fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, or poetry.

Charlotte Writers Club members, Dede Wilson, Annie Maier and Russ Case will be just a few of the evening’s presenters. Griffin and the other writers, including Caroline Castle Hicks, Julie Degni Marr, Carolyn Noell, Lisa Otter Rose, Kristin Sherman and Militza Simic plan to bring to the program some of the many ways to enrich our own writing and our writing projects. We will hear how their work was inspired and developed in Griffin’s classes, how they moved forward from those experiences into even more exciting endeavors.

Maureen Ryan Griffin is an award-winning poet and nonfiction writer. She is the author of two collections of poetry, This Scatter of Blossoms, a Finalist in Main Street Rag’s 2003 Chapbook Contest, and When the Leaves are in the Water, published by Sandstone Publishing, 1994. Griffin also writes and reads commentaries for Charlotte, North Carolina’s NPR station WFAE 90.7. She offers writing and creativity classes, as well as individual coaching and critiquing, through her business, WordPlay.

Griffin is married to Richard L.Griffin, Director of Campus Printing at Central Piedmont Community College. He has written for trade journals and his writing is included in Spinning Words into Gold, along with writing contributions from the Griffin’s two talented children -- daughter, Amanda Griffin, a junior English major at UNC Chapel Hill, and their son, Dan Griffin, a senior at Charlotte Catholic High.

We invite you to bring your tools in the form of pens, pencils and paper on December 12^th and join us as we go panning for gold, the shinning nuggets of writing wisdom from Maureen Ryan Griffin and her crew of miners.

 November 21, 2006

Non-Fiction Writer Frye Gaillard to Discuss History as Literature

             At 7:00 p.m. on November 21^st, the Charlotte Writers’ Club will welcome an old friend, Frye Gaillard, as our program speaker at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, SouthPark. Frye has written or edited more than twenty books, including the two he will speak about with CWC. These are two of his most acclaimed and well received books: Cradle of Freedom: Alabama and the Movement that Changed America, published by the University of Alabama Press, and winner of the 2005 Lillian Smith Award for Writing about the American South; and The Dream Long Deferred: The Landmark Struggle for Desegregation in Charlotte, North Carolina.  First published by the University of North Carolina Press, the third edition of this book will be released this fall by the University of South Carolina Press, updating the story through the controversies of the 1900’s and today.

            The focus of Gaillard’s talk will be how writing history or other forms of narrative non-fiction can be a creative and literary endeavor and using Cradle of Freedom (which he spent three years researching) and The Dream Long Deferred as examples what Faulkner called “the human heart in conflict with itself.”

            In taking the civil rights movement in Alabama and the South, and the recent history of our city’s school system desegregation years as his subjects, Gaillard probes what is close to our own hearts and minds. His books tell real stories of real people and how their lives are affected and profoundly changed by unfolding events, past and present. These stories are indeed gripping and moving. Gaillard’s gifts as a graceful and compelling writer take us along the courageous road of national figures such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and others not as well known, but just as committed in the struggle for justice. In both books, we see the leaders and the followers on both sides of the racial divide.

            Gaillard, writer in residence at the University of South Alabama, was a Charlotte writer and journalist for more than 30 years, 20 of those spent at the Charlotte Observer where he held numerous positions, including religion writer, editorial writer and Southern Editor. After leaving the Observer in 1990, Gaillard served as a columnist for Creative Loafing, and with Amy Rogers, was a founding editor of Novello Festival Press.

Gaillard’s other books include The Greensboro Four: Civil Rights Pioneers, published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company; and If  I were a Carpenter: Twenty Years of Habitat for Humanity, from John F. Blair, Publisher in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

            At the 2006 Central Piedmont Literary Festival, Gaillard received the Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts. He currently lives on the Alabama coast with his wife Nancy, a former principal in the Charlotte Mecklenburg school system.

 

 

October 3, 2006

Novello Prize Winner to Speak in October

Journalist/Novelist Mark Ethridge September Speaker