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For many years, we supported ourselves with donations, book sales, and a few grants. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to fund our books. Without your support and donations, there would be no Jackpine Writers’ Bloc and no Talking Stick books. Remember, your tax donation is tax deductible. We are a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization.

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September Writer’s Meeting

Hello Everyone,

Thanks to all of you who attended the book party and made it a great success. We had around 70 people in attendance.

Before the book party, we had a quick monthly meeting at noon. The next monthly meeting will be on Sunday, October 16, 2011, at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids MN from 12:30 to 3PM.

PRESENT AT MONTHLY MEETING:
Jerry, Scott, Cindy, Tarah, Russ, Scott, David, Niomi, Marion

We reminded everyone of the PRLAAC event coming up next Friday, September 23, 2011. We need to set up at 4PM. Jerry, Marion, LuAnne, and Niomi will attend. They will be next to Blank Canvas.

Also don’t forget about the two poetry events coming up soon. September 27, 2011 from 1 to 2:30 PM at Northwoods Bank Community Room in Park Rapids MN, poetry readings by Marsh Muirhead and John Thornberg. Then on October 4, 2011, same time of day, same location, we have readings by Penny Swan and Laura L Hansen.

Also coming up, October 1, Lake Region Writers in Fergus Falls. Leif Enger will be the speaker. Jerry will attend.

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At 1PM, people started arriving for the book party. We had a tremendous crowd. It is so inspiring to see so many people who enjoy writing and/or listening to writers reading their work. We had some excellent information on grants from Kris Bigalk, our poetry judge. Kris enjoyed judging our top poetry submissions this year and said it was difficult to choose the winner.

We sold many Talking Stick books. We had 8 or 10 writers selling their own books this year. We hope to expand on that next year.

Our group has been in existence since 1993. We hope to be able to continue. We charge no reading fees or membership fees. We have survived quite a few years now mainly with book sales and funds from a benefit golf tournament and some donations. We would like to continue being able to pay prize money but this year, things were very difficult. Probably because of the economy, our benefit golf tournament funds and donations have really decreased. We hate to have to ask for donations from people, but we did hand out a friendraising letter at the book party. We hear all the time how people enjoy the books and the workshops and the parties and we want to be able to continue. People responded very nicely. We will probably also send out the friendraising letter to our email contacts.

Thank you so much to those of you who donated to our group to enable us to keep publishing. Thanks to those of you who bought books. We appreciate all of you so much!

Also, those of you who are published in Talking Stick 20 but were not able to attend the book party—we will be mailing out your free book over the next few weeks. Several of our winners who did not attend will also receive their checks in the mail over the next few weeks.

Thanks again for your support. It was great to see old friends and meet new ones!