Celebrate Kathryn Stripling Byer on October 1
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- Category: Network News
SYLVA—On Sunday, October 1, the North Carolina Writers' Network and NCWN-West will celebrate the life of Kathryn Stripling Byer (1944-2017).
The event will take place at the Jackson County Public Library, 310 Keener St., Sylva, from 2:00-4:00 pm.
Click here to view the event information on Facebook.
Speakers include:
- Ed Southern, Executive Director, NCWN
- Kevin Watson, Publisher, Press 53
- Susan Lefler, published poet and friend
- Catherine Carter, poet, Jackson County Rep for NCWN-West
Guests will listen to a recording of Byer reading a poem, and hear one of her poems set to music. A reception follows. Additional programming will be announced soon.
Kathryn Stripling Byer served as North Carolina’s Poet Laureate from 2005 through 2009. She has published six collections of poetry, including Wildwood Flower, which won the Lamont Award (now the James Laughlin Award) from the Academy of American Poets, and Coming to Rest, for which she received the Hanes Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She was a longtime Program Coordinator for NCWN-West and Jackson County regional rep for NCWN. She was a 2012 inductee of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame.
"She went to bat for me on more than one occasion and I will never forget it," says current NCWN-West Program Coordinator Glenda Council Beall. "When a problem arose, I e-mailed or called Kay Byer, and she always helped me work it out."
To learn more about the poet who many affectionately referred to as Kay, visit her page on the website of the NC Literary Hall of Fame. There, visitors can watch Kay read poems, sample her work, and listen to interviews.
NCWN-West (North Carolina Writers' Network-West) is a program of the North Carolina Writers' Network. It was created in 1992 with the mission of supporting writers in the nine westernmost counties of North Carolina, as well as adjacent counties in Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina and to alleviate the isolation of writers living in this mountainous area by providing programs, resources, and community.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to all writers, in all genres, at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.
The Art of Creative Research: Philip Gerard
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WRIGHTSVILLE BEACH—Award-winning author and longtime professor in the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington Philip Gerard will lead the class "The Art of Creative Research" at the North Carolina Writers' Network 2017 Fall Conference, November 3-5, at the Holiday Inn Resort in Wrightsville Beach.
Registration is now open.
Philip Gerard is the author of four novels and six books of nonfiction, most recently The Art of Creative Research—A Field Guide for Writers. His novel The Dark of the Island (2016) was awarded an Ippy for regional fiction. He teaches in the Department of Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.
NCWN has been celebrating literary journals this year, so we asked Philip to tell us about his first publication.
"I used to send out my short stories, and as the rejections came back in the postpaid manila envelopes, I’d stack them on my desk," Philip said. "Then every few weeks, I’d open them and extract the rejected manuscript. And send it off again. A story called 'Death by Reputation' came back that way from New England Review/Bread Loaf Quarterly and I threw it on the pile. Some weeks later when I opened it, I found a very gracious letter along with the returned manuscript. Indicating that the editors wanted to publish the story but didn’t feel that the ending was quite right, and would I make another pass at it?
"So as you can imagine, I immediately dashed off a letter (in those pre-email and texting days) and wound up writing several more versions of the ending before I got it right—and they published the story, which appears in my collection Things We Do When No One Is Watching. So now I read my mail a little more diligently. It was my first story to be published in a reputable magazine."
"The Art of Creative Research" will address ways to explore the world in search of stories. Crucial to this process is re-imagining the "known"—applying imagination as an investigative tool. Research is an adventure that can reinvigorate the writer’s work in any genre, grounding stories, poems, and essays of ideas in the authentic stuff of the world. Participants will leave with a template for how two plan their own research adventure.
Fall Conference attracts hundreds of writers from around the country and provides a weekend full of activities that include lunch and dinner banquets with readings, keynotes, tracks in several genres, open mic sessions, and the opportunity for one-on-one manuscript critiques with editors or agents. This year's Master Classes will be led by Dan Albergotti (Poetry); Wendy Brenner (Creative Nonfiction); and Nina de Gramont (Fiction). New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash will give the Keynote Address.
The nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the state’s oldest and largest literary arts services organization devoted to all writers, in all genres, at all stages of development. For additional information, visit www.ncwriters.org.