March Meeting Minutes 2026
Hello Everyone,
Today we held our March meeting.
PRESENT:
Ryan, Sharon, Mike, Marlys, Erin, Dawn, Jan.
TALKING STICK 35:
Submissions are all in. We received submissions from 133 writers; they sent in 330 writings. They are all copied and ready to hand out to the Editorial Board. The Ed Board meeting is Sunday April 12. The book release party is scheduled for Saturday Sept. 19, 2026, with a poetry workshop in the morning.
MISCELLANEOUS:
Tarah and Sharon have finished two of the three books they are working on—Richard’s poetry book and Dawn’s book of essays. Niomi’s novel is next.
Our group has been approached with the possibility of an afternoon or evening of readings—poetry and short stories—at Long Lake Theater. We discussed it and six of us were interested. We will ask for more information. Some of us may wish to go see the theater to gauge ease of access to the stage.
EVENTS:
Mike attended the Heartland Arts meeting. They discussed the Monarch Butterfly Project, noon hour concerts Art Leap, the Art Calendar, Art Beat, and the Nemeth Art Center.
WRITING EVENTS:
There will be a poetry reading at Four Pines Book Store in Bemidji on Saturday at 3 PM. There will be 4 poets from the League of MN Poets.
Two weeks ago, Mike attended a MN Authors’ Day Event at the book store in Hutchinson. Over 50 authors appeared at 24+ independent bookstores to raise over $50,000 for immigrant rights, supporting the Immigrant Law center of MN and the Women’s Foundation of MN. Attendees enjoyed author signings and signed book giveaways.
We were told that there will be a Romance-only bookstore called Forbidden Love opening in April on 4th Street in Bemidji.
Northwoods Writers Conference will be held at the Bemidji State University on June 23-26 of 2026. Go to www.northwoodswriters.org for more information.
On March 26, 2026, there is a poetry slam at Fozzie’s in Bemidji.
On May 2, Mike will be at Lykke Books & Coffee in New Ulm, MN. There will be 4 writers there to do a workshop for the area writing community.
Niomi and Sharon had been testing AI, asking it to write a poetic definition of aging or to write a poem using 8 specific words. We were amazed and appalled at what beautiful things it wrote for us. This started a good, long conversation about what AI can do to the world. Some writers in business jobs have been losing their jobs because AI can do what they have been doing. Teachers try not to let their students use AI but it seems very hard to stop them. We are very worried that young people growing up will lose their creativity and they will lose problem-solving abilities.
We know that AI can pick out key words when you ask them something, but does AI really always know how to put those words into context? Young people won’t learn to spell, how to write sentences, how to analyze information.
We also mentioned that we do not like the fact that students often do not learn cursive writing now. Some states still offer it, some do not. These students then do not know how to read letters from other people, how to read old handwritten documents, recipe books from their older relatives, journals, etc. These people do not have an actual signature so they can’t sign signature cards at banks, can’t sign checks or legal documents.
It was mentioned that many feel that it was more important for young people to learn keyboard skills rather than handwriting. That is probably how the idea of eliminating cursive got started.
We all agreed that we are not happy with some of the changes we see in the world. We all enjoy writing, learning words, learning to choose the words that work the best in a poem or story. We all enjoy working with punctuation, choosing the places in a poem where a comma or period is needed. These things are important to all of us. We are sorry that young people using AI will miss out on so much.
A great meeting. Hope to see you all next time!