:: Mental Kudzu ::

John Ehle Reading in Asheville, NC

Internationally acclaimed author and Asheville native, John Ehle, will read and sign books on October 10 at 2 pm. The event, sponsored by The Writers’ Workshop, will be held at the West Asheville Public Library at 942 Haywood Road. It is free and open to the public. A reception follows, hosted by Friends of West Asheville Library. Books will be available for purchase at the book-signing.

Mr. Ehle is the author of seventeen books, including Winter People; The Journey Of August King; and Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. He will read from his novel, Last One Home, first published in 1984 and recently re-issued. It is the last in a seven-book series about the settling of the Appalachian Mountains in Western North Carolina.

Ehle is a member of the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame, and has received the North Carolina Award for Literature, the Thomas Wolfe Prize, and the Lillian Smith Award for Southern Fiction. He is a five-time winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, and has won the Mayflower Award; the Governor’s Award for Meritorious Service; and the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities. Mr. Ehle holds honorary doctorates from UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Asheville, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and Berea College.

He also serves on the Advisory Board of The Writers’ Workshop, a non-profit organization founded in 1985. A luncheon for Mr. Ehle will be held at noon, prior to the reading. For more information about the reading or luncheon, please email writersw@gmail.com , or call 828-254-8111.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Registration Opens for the 2008 North Carolina Writers’ Network

Spring Conference

Charlotte, NC – Registration is now open for the 2008 North Carolina Writers’ Network Spring Conference, which takes place Saturday, April 26, from 8 a.m. until 5:45 p.m. in the Elliott University Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The annual event draws hundreds of writers for intensive workshops in fiction, memoir, creative nonfiction, screenwriting, poetry and publishing led by distinguished writing faculty from across the nation. Participants also attend panel discussions, faculty readings, and benefit from networking opportunities with publishers, editors, and other writers.
“Bringing together North Carolina’s writers is the most important thing we do,” says Ed Southern, the Network’s executive director. “The state as a whole has a stronger literary tradition than any one of its towns or cities. Writers from every corner of the state benefit from being a part of that tradition.”

Southern adds that while the Internet has forever changed the literary marketplace, writers’ essential challenges remain the same. “Writers work alone,” he says. “But we’ll always need opportunities to improve our craft, to find an audience, and to share ideas and inspiration with other writers. The Network’s conferences provide that sense of community.”

Critically acclaimed poet Linda Gregg—author of six books and recipient of such honors as a Guggenheim Fellowship, Whiting Award, National Endowment for the Arts grant, and the PEN/Voelcker Award—will provide the keynote address. Gregg’s one-hour talk, which begins at 3:30 p.m., is free and open to the public, as are the faculty readings, which begin at 4:30 p.m.

Conference participants may select from half- and full-day workshops covering such craft issues as plot, characterization and dialogue in fiction and creative nonfiction, and using sensory imagery in poetry and developing creative momentum from one poem to the next. Additional workshop selections feature instruction for screenwriters and playwrights.

Registration for the conference—made possible with support from the Center for Creative Writing in the Arts, UNC-Greensboro, and the North Carolina Arts Council—is $110 for Network members, $145 for non-members.

To register, visit www.ncwriters.org, or call (704) 246-6314 for more information.
# # #
About the North Carolina Writers’ Network

Founded in 1985, the nonprofit North Carolina Writers’ Network is the largest statewide literary arts organization in the country. The mission of the North Carolina Writers’ Network is to connect, promote, and lead emerging writers and established writers through workshops, conferences, and other programs and services. The Network builds audiences for literature, advocates for the literary arts and for literacy, and provides information and support services for writers of all kinds and at all levels.

###

and now for something completely different: