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September 26th 2009

Today we had a quick meeting right ahead of our Talking Stick 18. Present: John, Scott, Tarah, Sharon, Niomi, Marion, LuAnne, Marsha, Christine, Luke.

For our next meeting, we will go back to our normal third Sunday of the month. The meeting will be held on Sunday, October 18, 2009, from 12:30 to 3PM at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids MN.

WRITING EVENTS
Saturday, October 3, 2009 Lake Region Writers Network Kickoff Conference, “Writers Helping Writers.” From 9AM to 3:30 PM in Fergus Falls. Workshops, panels, table talks. For more information, email lakeregionwriters@gmail.com or call 218-862-5510 or 218-998-3333.

Saturday, October 10, 2009, Sinclair Lewis Writers conference at Sauk Centre High School Fine Arts Auditorium. Speakers: Will Weaver, William Kent Krueger, Wang Ping, Daniel Slager. For more information, contact Jim Umhoefer, Coordinator 320-352-2735. To register online, www.saukherald.com/ftp/writers.

Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series at MN State University of Moorhed, 24th Season, Fall Semester 2009. For more information, contact Thom Tammaro at 477-2199 or visit website www.mnstate.edu/finearts. Todd Boss, Deane Hulse and Merrie Sue Holtan, Patricia Hampl.

Mystery, Crime and Thriller Festival on Saturday and Sunday, November 14-15, 2009 at Open Book in MPLS. Contact The Loft Literary Center in MPLS. www.loft.org or 612-379-8999.

TALKING STICK BOOKS
Audrey Helbling did a review of TS17 in Midwest Mix recently. In Minnesota Moments, she wrote an article about old grain elevators in MN. Sharon assisted her in finding some poems about grain elevators. Audrey used two poems from local writers in her article. Charmaine Pappas Donovan and Anthony Swann.

20×20
Next year, the Nevis Muskie Days committee would like to do a 12×12. We will assist them and probably do a book for the event similar to what we did in 2008.

ART LEAP WEEKEND
Many great artsy events going on around Park Rapids this weekend. It was a good and a bad thing having our book party on the same weekend. It was good because probably more people were around. It was not so good because we lost some of our local writers when they went to do a reading at Long Lake Theater from 2 to 4.

MISCELLANEOUS
Cindie and Jennifer can’t be with us today for the book party since they had a big book show in the cities to attend. We miss them!

TALKING STICK 18 BOOK PARTY
We had between 60 and 70 people today, similar to last year. We had quite a few people selling their books: Paul Heeren, Judy Merritt, Marsha Porter, Jerry Mevissen, Shirley Ensrud, Duane Schwartz, Jodi Buchan, Sharon Harris. We also had books by all 3 of our Celebrity judges. Faith Sullivan was in attendance. She was our Fiction judge for this year. We also had the older TS books for sale. We are sold out on Volume 2 and 5 and 9. We have very few of 12 and 13. Tarah Wolff also had information on her web design services.

Faith spoke about writing and read from the novel she is currently working on. Then the winners were announced. The winners read their winning pieces. We were moved to tears or to laughter. Then anyone who was in the book was invited to read. We heard so many good pieces.

Thank you to everyone who joined us today. We got to greet old friends and meet new writers. Thank you to all who helped make the event a huge success. Thanks to Faith Sullivan for joining in our day. Thanks to Beagle Books for all your support. Thanks to Northwoods Bank for providing such a nice place to hold our event. Thanks to Fair Haven Golf Course for putting on the benefit golf tournament earlier this year. That event helped us make money to help pay for this year’s book.

Thank you everyone! It was great to see all of you. Please let us know how you like the newest book. And to those of you in the book who were not able to attend or have someone pick up your book, we will be mailing out the rest over the next week or two. Be sure to let us know if your address has changed since you sent in your submissions last winter.