April 25th 2004

Today we had our April meeting of the Jackpine Writers’ Bloc. The May meeting will be on Sunday, May 16 from 1:30 to 4 PM. We may decide to meet somewhere else once in a while, and we will be e-mailing everyone with the location ahead of time. Present today were: Jerry, Russ, LuAnne, Sharon and Tarah. Also we had Jill from Red Lake Falls visiting us. She is a member of a writers group called Permanent Ink. Nice to meet you, Jill.

TALKING STICK 13:

We are making progress on the book. We have received 10 or 12 envelopes of submissions already. Five weeks to go and they always come at the very last minute. Deadline is June 15. Jerry will see about doing a feature story in the Menahga Review Messenger about our group and the next book. At the last meeting, Jerry brought up the idea of having Stonehouse Press involved in this book. The Stonehouse Press was organized by the same people who started the New York Mills Cultural Center. Sharon has met with Jean Jacob from Stonehouse. One option would be to have their name on the book as publisher but it seems that we prefer to keep our name on it as publisher like we have always done. Jerry would like to see them get more experience in publishing. Sharon and Tarah would be willing to let them sit in on things, perhaps have one person as a member of the editorial board, so they could observe our procedures for publishing our book. Jerry will be our spokesperson at their meeting this week.

HACKENSACK ARTS FESTIVAL:

The Northwoods Arts Council has an arts festival in Hackensack on August 28. They may include “a celebration of writing” again this year, but only if area writers are really interested in doing so. A space is available in the basement of a church where coffee will also be served. Books could be displayed and sold, poetry readings could be part of it, published writers could bring their own work to sell. They need to know if we are interested. We felt that some of us would go if they did include writers. We have recently gotten a list of local writing groups and we could spread the word to them if they want us to.

TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY:

Jerry is working on the 10 year party, perhaps early August. We want to make sure that Linda Henry can attend. He is thinking of having it perhaps at the museum or at the Long Lake Theater. The theater would be a lovely place to have it if it would work out. We could have a picnic and/or a barbecue; we could use the stage for readings, presentations, etc. Perhaps this could be worked out so that Linda could do a writers workshop here on Saturday and the party could be Saturday evening or Sunday. Jerry would like to have Faith Sullivan attend the party also. (She cannot attend the last week of June or first week of July.) This could be open to the public, we could have books for sale.

WORKSHOPS:

Cindie is planning workshops. She has one scheduled for June 19 with Florence Witkop. We are still deciding whether to pay for these ourselves or to involve Region 2.

MISCELLANEOUS:

Russ did attend the Third Sunday session at the library in Detroit Lakes. They may not have them again for a while. They had a series of three with Minnesota writers, including Carol Bly. You could get more information from the Detroit Lakes Library web site.
We had a great meeting with great discussions. Most of us read some things we have been working on recently.