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February Meeting Minutes 2016

Today we held our February meeting. Our next meeting will be on Sunday, March 20, 2016, from 12:30 to 3 PM at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids, MN.

PRESENT: Ryan, Susan, Ploy, Jan, Marlys, Jerry, Mary, Dawn, Sharon.

PLACES TO PUBLISH: The deadline for submissions for Talking Stick 25 is March 1, 2016. Get your submissions in! Send either by regular mail or by the electronic submission on our website. Submission guidelines are also on the website. We are also allowing extra submissions this year. www.jackpinewriters.com.

Writers conference at Bemidji State University June 20-26, 2016. www.northwoodswriters.org or 218-755-2068.

Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry, Milkweed Editions, deadline March 1, 2016. 612-332-3192. abby_travis@milkweed.org.

WRITING EVENTS: 2^nd Annual Writer’s Weekend in Lansboro, MN. April 22-24, 2016 with Candace Simar. Cost $100. 4 sessions. Register by April 1, $50 deposit. Space is limited. Contact Anna V’s Bed & Breakfast in Lanesboro. 507-467-2686. www.annavbb.com.www.candacesimar.com.

Tentative plans for our book release party: Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016, at The Patio near Hubbard MN. We are working on a workshop by Faith Sullivan. More details out in March. Save the date!

Jerry is working on an event at the Museum in Park Rapids MN. During the month of August, we can have a room there to display our Talking Stick books. During the first week, we plan to have an open house. Jerry is setting the room up like a reading room with lots of books.

Jerry is also working on the Great American Story event. There will be a program for the winners on Sept. 24, 2016, at the Armory. This is on Art Leap weekend.

Elisa Korenne, singer/songwriter, has an event on March 13 at the Robertson theater in the Wadena Deer Creek Middle/High School. Her signature work features original songs and stories about people whose significance was perhaps overlooked at the time. This performance will focus on MN women. Elisa has many performances in March and April in the surrounding area.

Jerry has put on 6 annual writers’ retreats at his ranch near Nimrod. He will NOT be putting one on this year. He is taking at least a one year hiatus. We will revisit this next year. We always loved Jerry’s special events.

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS: In a future meeting, we will perhaps have a Bemidji Publisher attend and tell us about his company.

Today we had a special guest. She is the guest writer at the retreat in New York Mills. Ploy is living in San Francisco and is fromThailand. We enjoyed listening to the story she read. Ploy is working on a book of short stories while at the retreat in New York Mills.

MISCELLANEOUS JACKPINE ITEMS: We wanted to mention that we greatly appreciate the interest and support of many MN writers. Over the last few meetings, we have had many new writers. At times, we had so many that it was beginning to get unwieldy and difficult for our core members to get time to read. We did want to mention and give everyone a heads-up—we may eventually have to divide into two separate meetings if we continue to frequently have a large number of writers. Again, we appreciate everyone’s interest and support, but we may have to do this so that everyone will have enough time to read. Our Board is going to be discussing this in the near future. There are several ways of splitting into two separate meetings and we are not sure what might work best: by genre (we don’t like this idea), date of joining the group, level of writing skills, whether very beginner or advanced, whether published or not, etc. There are various ideas and we will let everyone know when the Board comes to a decision and if we feel we need to put this in place.

Many writers read from their work and received helpful critique. A good productive meeting today!