Winterville United Methodist Church’s newly retired pianist, Mary Whitehead, has filled the church on the square’s sanctuary and our small town with music for 75 years. That’s a lifetime of tapping the keys for Jesus and for Mary’s neighbors and friends. I got a chance to visit with Mary briefly the other night while standing…
One of the most popular events in the little town of Winterville, Georgia, where I’ve lived for many years, is the Christmas in Winterville celebration. This year, this event takes place on Friday, December 3. It begins with the arrival of Santa and Mrs. Claus. In Winterville, they don’t fly in on a sleigh pulled…
They’re coming to my house for Thanksgiving this year. “They” are my family members: daughter, son, son’s girlfriend, mother, maybe nephew. Counting my spouse, that’s only six or seven of us planning to gather in my Winterville dining room on Thanksgiving day. We’ll dine on the usual: turkey, ham, dressing, cranberry sauce, vegetables, and, of…
Winterville’s Front Porch Book Store opened for business one year ago in a tiny building on Marigold Lane that once housed city hall. In just a few short months, this store, which provides funds for the Winterville library, has become a community gathering place, as well as a great source of reading material at reasonable…
My guest on Winterville Writer today is Darcy Pattison, author of 19 Girls and Me; Searching for Oliver K. Woodman; The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman; The Wayfinder; and The River Dragon. Darcy also is the author of one of the books I most often recommend to aspiring and published writers: Novel Metamorphsis. I first…
This coming weekend, August 28 – 29, 2010, marks the debut of a brand, new literary event: The Suwanee Festival of Books, in Suwanee, Georgia. I’ll be participating in a panel at 1:30 pm, Saturday, called Got Kids Books?, along with authors Melinda Long (How I Became a Pirate, Pirates Don’t Change Diapers, a Booksense,…
Like most writers, I spend long hours in my home office, tapping on a keyboard in isolation. But every now and then I get to leave the computer and my current manuscript and my white cat, Casey, and venture out into the real world. This past weekend was one of those “venture out” times. I…
Sometimes when I go out and speak to kids and adults at schools and other events, I tell them how I became an avid reader and writer at age eight. I did this by reading lots of books, such as The Wizard of Oz, my childhood favorite, and by falling in love with my local…
This past weekend, I enjoyed being part of the very first Northwest Georgia Valley Writers Conference in the Harris Arts Center in downtown Calhoun, Georgia. This new conference, organized by Gray Bridges, Literary Director of the Arts Center, featured a 90-minute writing workshop with author Terry Kay, during which he explained “The DNA of Writing:…
What happens when 200 children’s writers and illustrators gather in one place for a whole weekend? If the group includes award-winning author Jane Yolen, editors Cheryl Klein (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic) and Meredith Mundy (Sterling Publishing), plus agent Josh Adams (Adams Literary), the result is literary magic! In a time when some writers’ conferences are…
