What We Do and Why We're Here
The Jackpine Writers' Bloc is native to Minnesota. We are a writing group as well as a publishing company. Our literary journal, The Talking Stick, has become a state-wide publishing ground for amateur and experienced writers alike. Our goal in publishing writers is simple - we publish to encourage solid writing that shows promise, creativity and brilliance.
We started where most writers up here seem to start - hiding behind jack pines with few outlets and few who could enjoy our craft with us. Things have changed. The writers in our group, and those from many other writing groups that have sprung up in nearby cities, offer experience, criticism and encouragement in abundance.
We are a community, too - If you're looking for people who write to become better writers and better people, we are people who believe that being published is a fortunate thing to be cherished. We meet every month. We want to help. That's why we're here. We meet on the third Sunday of each month from 12:30 - 3:00 at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids, Minnesota and we hope you will join us there.
Who We Are
Linda Henry
founder
Linda Henry is an essayist, storyteller, and occasional poet. She has written hundreds of articles for national magazines, including Reader's Digest, Parenting, Travel & Leisure, and Glamour, as well as regional and trade publications, websites, and newspapers. She was a co-founder of The Talking Stick, and was editor in chief of its first 8 volumes (1992?1999). From 1999 through 2001, she contributed a column to Lake Country Journal, "Of Woodstoves and Websites," about her life as a single mother in northern Minnesota. A full-time freelance writer and editor for eleven years, she is now editorial manager for Children's Home Society & Family Services. In her personal writing life, she has many works in progress.
Cynthia J. Ekren
founder
cindiee@hotmail.com
-Bio coming soon-
Sharon Harris
director - editor
sharrick1@wcta.net
Sharon Harris has been writing poetry since she was 15. She has had over 170 poems published in various anthologies and magazines. She is proud to have had several poems in The Lake Country Journal and Lakes Alive and The Talking Stick, all local publications. She was born and raised near Park Rapids and currently works at First National Bank of Menahga & Sebeka as Operations Officer and Assistant Cashier. Her hobbies include photography and reading. She has published two books of her poetry, Timeless Tracks in 1984 and Life Savors in 2000. A third book is in progress.
Sharon Harris has been the co-editor for the TS books since 2003. She does proofing and editing, serves on the Editorial Board, handles the submissions, etc. and she organizes the Third Sunday of each month member meetings and prepares the minutes. She is also on the Board of directors for the JWB.
Jerry Mevissen
director
riverman@wcta.net
Jerry Mevissen emigrated from the Twin Cities to the banks of the Crow Wing River near Nimrod, MN, after a 36-year career in marketing at Honeywell. He found writing to be an effective therapy program in a class at Normandale Junior College, and continued with writing classes at The Loft in Minneapolis. Two years ago he began a column for the Sebeka Review Messenger, "The Nimrod Cronicles". Now, one hundred columns later, he has assembled the "Best Of...", a book published in September 2003. You can also find some of his short stories in Volumes 10 and 11 of the annual anthology The Talking Stick.
Marilyn Wolff
director
marilyn@fairgolf.com
Marilyn Wolff grew up on a small dairy farm south of Park Rapids. She keeps very busy at her business, the Hubbard County Abstract Company and at the family-owned golf course, Fair Havens Golf Course which was built on the farm. Her greatest joys are spending time with her kids and grandkids. She has been published in the last five Talking Sticks and is on the board of directors of the JWB.
Tarah L. Wolff
editor
eveningstorm@tarahlynn.com
The youngest in the group, she is a native to Minnesota and has been writing fiction for several years. She is the current webmaster and web designer in the group; the website you're seeing now was her doing. She has been the co-Editor of the Talking Stick since she joined the group in 2002, and since has been the Layout Designer of all of the books the Jackpine Writers' Bloc has done (The Talking Stick Volumes 12-Current, Broken Hart by Jerry Mevissen and the 20x20).
She offers web and print design.
Contributing Members
Florence Witkop
fwitkop@wcta.net
I've done a lot of things, from teaching school to working as a census taker to owning and operating, with my husband, a northwoods fishing and hunting resort while raising five children.
I am also, proudly, a writer. I do not write to fulfill some inner urge. I write because I think getting paid for doing something I enjoy is the best possible lifestyle. I've been writing and selling short fiction for twenty years, during which time the checks I've received have been a steady and dependable part of our income. After 150 or so stories published nationally, I stopped counting. I've been published in the 'True's' (True Story,True Romance, etc), Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and TheTalking Stick and I was picked as the Region 2 Literary Artist a while back.
I have written and published literary as well as commercial fiction but my preferred niche as a writer is romance because I believe love, whether in the form of reality, fantasy, fun or pure escapism, is one of the most basic, important and enjoyable of all human emotions.
LuAnne White
luicakes@unitelc.com
I was brought up one of those 'resorter' people on Long Lake near Park Rapids. Here for the summer and elsewhere the remainder of the year. Summers were carefree. Full of swimming, gardening, 'helping' Grandpa in the garden and Dad with all the other chores. I spent quite a bit of time with my Grandmother exchanging poems. It took another 30 years before I became serious about writing. I was published for the first time in the last Talking Stick edition. My current project is a young adult mystery novel.
Cynthia Nee Teller
baronne_cynthia@hotmail.com
Cynthia nee Teller was born in Edina, Minnesota on May 5, 1969, and has worked, mostly in California, as a professional dancer, model, and actress. Her interest in writng came about from meeting her husband, Roy, at a theatre audition in 1987 for "Noises Off" at Bemidji State University. He was cast as "Selsdon," she as "Poppie," and the two have been a couple ever since exchanging story ideas all the while. Cynthia's main interest is in writing poetry, but she has had five plays published to date in collaboration with Roy. Her other interests include Egyptology, crafting jewelry, and co-writing a saleable horror novel. Cynthia is also the proud mother of Riordan Maxim, who was born on July 3, 1999.
Roy C. Booth
roycifer@yahoo.com
Roy C. Booth was born 8/26/65 in Bemidji, MN, He graduated from Pillager High School in 1983, Brainerd Community College in 1987 (AA degree), and Bemidji State University in 1989 (BA English/Speech-Theatre) and in 1997 (MA in English). Roy is a published author, essayist, journalist, poet, and all around storyeller. He has been optioned as a screenwriter and has been published 30 times as a playwright with over 430 productions around the world in such locales as Los Angeles, New York City, Winnipeg, Montreal, Edingburgh, London, Paris, Warsaw, Bern, Durban, New Dehli, Tianjin, Jakarta, Perth, Melbourne, Wellington, Aruba, and Brasilia. He has received awards, grants, and citations from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Poland, and Indonesia from such groups as the United Nations, the McKnight Foundation, Atlanta's Center for Disease Control, and others. Roy is presently working on a non-fiction piece on Norse mythology, and collaborates voraciously, especially with his wife, Cynthia. His other interests include judo, reading, comic books, strategy games, walking, camping, movies, directing, and fatherhood, the last (and greatest) concerning his son, Riordan Maxim.
John Thornberg
jt39@comcast.net
I write poetry and short essays from my backyard window, taking notes on a world I see from both sides of the glass. I started writing not long after my first wife died in 1988. Somehow the wound that opened bleeds words. My poems and essays have been published in ByLine Magazine; Chrysanthemum; Talking Stick; Watershed; and several self-published Chapbooks. I have been rejected by: The New Yorker; Atlantic Monthly; Reader's Digest; Saturday Evening Post; Women's Home Journal; Better Homes & Gardens; Ideals; Writer's Digest; and a host of others. My fellow writers are true friends who know the angst of a writer as much as the art of writing. They are a support group that understands writing as both cause and cure of our common condition.
Evolution of the Jackpine Writers' Bloc
By Linda HenryIt started in the fall of 1993, with a community-ed class offered through the Park Rapids school system. I was the instructor. The class was given the optimistic title, "Getting Published," and it was my intention to get local writers who enrolled in the class to send out query letters and manuscripts to potential publishers, collect rejection slips by the truckload, and finally, at long last, to help these budding writers achieve the goal of getting published.
It was a diverse group of teachers, doctors, retirees, renaissance women, and small business owners. My only credential as their instructor was that I'd been working as a freelance writer for several years and had some success getting published in magazines.
After the first couple of weeks, we decided to break up into small groups for a couple of sessions so the students could critique each other's work. But a few days before the first group was to meet, my family was involved in a horrible car accident. My husband and I were badly injured, and our beautiful baby girl, not quite 16 months old, was killed.
The students were notified that I would not be able to teach the class, and were offered a reimbursement. Each one of them refused the money, asking instead that it be sent to my family as a memorial gift. They also decided to meet for the critique sessions as planned.
As that sad winter progressed, I was cheered by the funny little newsletter sent to me every month by Dr. Carson Gardner, a published poet and student in the class who had become defacto leader of the group. It was a great comfort to me, knowing "the writers' group" was meeting, and writing, and waiting for me to rejoin them. A few more local writers joined. In one of the newsletters, Carson mentioned they were discussing possible names. Someone had suggested "The Jackpine Writers' Bloc." I started attending meetings the following March, just in time to see that the name stuck (by refusing to call the group anything else).
Shortly after moving here several years ago, I wrote an article for an obscure, east-coast literary journal. "Many times in my first months here [in Menahga]," I wrote, "I've been tempted to put an ad in the local paper. It would run alongside those selling turkey manure or soliciting adoptable white babies for couples with 212 area codes. Mine would say: 'Wanted: People who like to read and discuss things over cold mugs of beer or even cocktails.' I imagine that such smart, artistic people must live around here somewhere. They wear wire-rimmed glasses and they're really skinny, so they can hide behind the jack pines to avoid detection."
The members of the Jackpine Writers' Bloc are those people. Okay, so I was misguided in making a correlation between cocktails and intelligent conversation, but I was coming from a New York City mentality, where a couple of drinks makes one instantly witty and smart, at least in one's own eyes. And my kindred spirits are not all rail thin, nor were they hiding behind the jack pines. They were simply living their lives, oblivious to the big-city prejudices about signs of intelligent life in the northern woods, writing their poetry, stories, reminiscences, and confessionals, open to criticism and always supportive of one another in a world that is not very supportive of writers. We're not isolated up here. On the contrary, we're tightly connected. I hope that this literary journal will be a celebration of life in north-central Minnesota, and of the highly intelligent decision to live outside so-called civilization.