13 November 2017
Today is my late husband’s birthday, and the anniversary of my baby brother walking on to the next life. So to celebrate them, today, I launched a new literary magazine, K’in.
They filled my life with so much beauty and humor and wisdom and joy. It only seems right to honor them by creating something beautiful.
Make art about honoring the dead.
A former English teacher, Helen Losse was born in Joplin, MO and educated at Missouri Southern State University (BSE, 1969), where she majored in secondary education and English and Wake Forest University (MALS, 2000), where she studied African American history and religion and creative writing. Her master’s thesis, Making All things New: The Redemptive Value of Unmerited Suffering In the Life and Works of Martin Luther King Jr., is available in the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University. She wrote four entries in the Encyclopedia of North Carolina.
She is the author of four books of poetry, Evey Tender Reed, Facing a Lonely West, Seriously Dangerous, and Better With Friends, as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have been anthologized in Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VII: North Carolina, and Kakalak 2014, nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and three times for a Best of the Net award, one of which was a finalist. She was featured by Kathryn Stripling Byer, Poet Laureate of NC, on the North Carolina Arts Council web site along with two other Winston-Salem poets. Helen’s poem “Four Snapshots of the Sea-Going Boats,” won 1st place in the 2009 Davidson County Writers’ Guild Adult Writing Contest. The former Poetry Editor for The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, she is now an Associate Poetry Editor for Kentucky Review.
Helen lives with her husband Bill in Winston-Salem, NC, where she occasionally writes book reviews for various literary magazines. She is a rail fan, a NASCAR fan, a Tony Stewart fan, a Kyle Busch fan, a Ryan Newman fan, a Kurt Busch, a Carl Edwards fan, a fan of the flip, a Dallas Cowboys fan, a Wake Forest Demon Deacons fan, and a fan of the Carolina Tar Heels. Helen is a Roman Catholic who loves Christmas. She and her husband have two grown sons.
Buy Helen’s Beautiful Books!
“If books of poetry were considered fitting contributions, Helen Losse’s Every Tender Reed, would be among the most heartfelt gifts in a church offering plate. With a keen eye for craft, Losse takes readers on a personal pilgrimage—pondering everything from the beauty of God’s creations to what it might feel like to “be consumed” in pursuit of spiritual purity. Written with fierce tenderness and the courage it takes to write poems both honest and true, this fine collection is a must read. “—Terri Kirby Erickson, author of A Lake of Light and Clouds
“Helen Losse’s Every Tender Reed resonates with a tone of loving memory and forgiveness—a promise for the good life, the verses raising blinds on the dark to brighten songs born to all the world’s beauty. Grace becomes a natural outgrowth of Imagination’s repose. Red clover soft-lights the people; all of us are the ever-present tender reeds.”—Shelby Stephenson, North Carolina Poet Laureate
“Losse’s Every Tender Reed is penance in poetry—honoring the reader as much as the Creator. This volume, for the most part, is a serene journey with the author as she walks the Path toward the enlightenment of self-knowledge.”—Patricia Gomes, Poet Laureate, City of New Bedford, MA
More From Helen Online
https://helenl.wordpress.com/interviews/
https://poetsgulfcoast.wordpress.com/2010/08/22/three-poems-by-helen-losse/
http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=1606
http://www.yourdailypoem.com/listpoem.jsp?poem_id=381
http://kathrynstriplingbyer.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-others-may-know-what-we-knew-by.html
Hear Helen Read and Talk About Her Work
https://helenl.wordpress.com/recorded-in-time/
Women’s Voices for Change
https://womensvoicesforchange.org/poetry-friday-helen-losse-video.htm
Happy Reading!
xo
Mary
I LOVE this book 🙂
The fabulous and loving Nancy Peacock is the author of the novels Life Without Water and Home Across the Road, as well as the memoir, A Broom of One’s Own: Words on Writing, Housecleaning, and Life. She currently teaches writing classes and workshops in and around Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband Ben. Her most recent novel, The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson is a definite must read!
Buy The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson
Praise for The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson
“ ‘I have been to hangings before, but never my own…’ From this riveting beginning to the last perfect word, Nancy Peacock grabs her reader by the throat and makes him hang on for dear life as the action moves from a Louisiana sugar plantation to life among the western Comanches, bringing to blazing life her themes of race and true love caught in the throes of history. The Life and Times of Persimmon Wilson is as deeply moving and exciting an American saga as has ever been penned.” -Lee Smith, Author of Guests on Earth and Dime Store
“Such a powerful story, so beautifully written. Peacock captures the era perfectly, with just the right amount of historical detail woven seamlessly into the fabric of the story. Unlike some historical novels loaded with digressions that are merely undigested chunks of raw research, this book is just the opposite—a fully realized world with rich, vivid characters. The novel hard to put down—and impossible to forget.” Donna Lucey – author of Sargent’s Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas
“A magnificent, immersive, breathtaking work of historical fiction. Nancy Peacock has written a beautifully crafted, richly detailed novel inhabited by morally complex and fully realized characters, enthralling and heartbreaking in equal measure.” -Jennifer Chiaverini – author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker
Buy Nancy’s Other Wonderful Books!
More from Nancy Online
https://pamlicowritersgroup.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/interview-with-nancy-peacock/
http://wunc.org/post/maid-novelist-writer-s-journey#stream/0
Reading
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho5sSIHC7Mg
Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTmcvRmpNkI
Happy Reading!
xo
Mary
Praise for Persimmon Wilson
This week meet Pamela Duncan! Novelist Pamela Duncan was born in Asheville and grew up in Black Mountain, Swannanoa, and Shelby, North Carolina. She holds a B.A. in journalism from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.A. in English/Creative Writing from North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She lives in Cullowhee, North Carolina and teaches creative writing atWestern Carolina University.
Her first novel, Moon Women, was a Southeastern Booksellers Association (now Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) Award Finalist, and her second novel, Plant Life, won the 2003 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. She is the recipient of the 2007 James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her third novel, The Big Beautiful, was published in March 2007. An excerpt from Pam’s current novel-in-progress, The Wilder Place, can be heard here: http://www.pameladuncan.com/the_wilder_place__a_novel_in_progress__80970.htm
Visit Pam’s Website
Buy Pam’s Beautiful Books
Moon Women
https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Women-Pamela-Duncan/dp/0440236487
Plant Life
The Big Beautiful
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/43755/the-big-beautiful-by-pamela-duncan/9780385338387/
Excerpts, Interviews, & Reviews
Moon Women
http://www.pameladuncan.com/moon_women_15139.htm
Plant Life
http://www.pameladuncan.com/plant_life_15138.htm
The Big Beautiful
http://www.pameladuncan.com/the_big_beautiful_52887.htm
More About Pam Online
Publishers Weekly
http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-385-33518-8
Fantastic Fiction
https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/pamela-duncan/plant-life.htm
BookPage
https://bookpage.com/reviews/2902-pamela-duncan-plant-life#.V7GuHfkrLDc
IndyWeek
http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/pamela-duncan/Content?oid=1181965
Hear Pam Read
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrkiaeMdTEg
Happy Reading!
xo
Mary
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