Where I'll be . . .

On Sunday, February 28 at 3:00, I'll be joining Nancy Dillingham, Celia Miles (editors and contributors) along with other contributors to the latest anthology from women authors of Western North Carolina.

If you're in the Asheville, NC area, I hope you'll drop by Malaprop's Books to help us celebrate the release of "It's All Relative: Tales from the Tree."

Rob Neufeld writes in the Citizen-Times “there’s a shadowy, down-to-earth and at times magical quality to the telling that makes the collection striking and significant.”

From Celia's webpage:

It’s All Relative: Tales from the Tree

Pundits have a penchant for comparing families to food…

Best-selling author, columnist, and Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen proclaims:

“In the family sandwich the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat.”

Journalist and social activist Letty Collin Pogrebin says:

“If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but inseparable—each segment distinct.”

An old Chinese proverb cautions: “Govern a family as you would cook a fish—very gently.”

Another puts it more succinctly: “Family are like fudge— mostly sweet with a few nuts.”

In this smorgasbord of family stories, essays, and poems, you can nibble on a nugget, munch on a morsel, or gobble down a whole meal.


Celia H. Miles and Nancy Dillingham have edited three previous anthologies of regional women writers: Christmas Presences from 45 WNC Women Writers, Clothes Lines from 75 WNC Women Writers and Women’s Spaces Women’s Places from 50 WNC Women Writers.

If you're interested in buying "It's All Relative," or any of the earlier anthologies, click here.  

Waking up to good news

Don't you love it when you wake up, check your email and find some nice news?

It was fun seeing this review, and fun seeing my name included.

The dark

Let’s talk about witches. If you’re thinking about fairy tale or Satanic characterizations, you’re missing the granny for the grimace.

There’s a long history of strong mountain women being feared as Baba Yagas.

Kaye Barley tells a story, “Aunt Peep and Uncle Leo,” that starts off as a girl’s fond recollection of summertime visits with her aunt and turns into something else after she overhears arguments and then gets news of Aunt Peep’s death.

At the funeral, Aunt Peep has a message for her niece that’s intended to not let the truth about Leo die.

Face it, writers love reading nice things about their work.

Especially when those writers make little or nothing in the way of a paycheck for their work.  Those kind words come to represent a sort of payment - much appreciated payment.

So - this - kind words for a group of some of the most talented women I've come to know and am quite proud to be a part of.  Herded together by the amazingly giving Celia Miles, along with poet extraordinaire Nancy Dillingham.  They've put their own writing aside, again, to edit the fourth anthology featuring Western North Carolina women writers.

Here's what Rob Neufeld has to say about the latest, "It's All Relative."

http://www.citizen-times.com/story/life/2015/11/01/neufeld-books-family-life-viewed-wnc-authors/75003400/