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November 21st 2010

Hello Everyone,

Today we held our November meeting. The next meeting is scheduled for December 19, 2010, at Bella Caffe in Park Rapids MN from 12:30 to 3PM. It is possible that we may reschedule or skip this one if we have too many Holiday conflicts.

PRESENT:

Jerry, Tarah, Sharon, Sandy, Scott

We had 4 new people today: Carol from Hewitt, Joyce from Bertha, and Terry and Ali from Bagley.

BOOKS:

Marion’s poetry book is now done and in her possession. (Tarah will get this out on the JWB website for sale.) Richard is interested in having us do a third poetry book for him. LuAnne’s book should be back soon.

Sharon is editing Tarah’s fantasy novel now and also working on her own third book of poetry.

NEXT TALKING STICK:

Jerry got Allison McGhee for our fiction judge for TS20. Charlie Baxter expressed interest in doing it next year for us.

We are looking at grants for our book next year. We are proud that we have survived for a long time with workshops and book sales and donations, but we will probably need a grant for next year–especially if we do another 20×20 event. There is a grant writing workshop in early December in Park Rapids, put on by Region 2. Sharon plans to attend. Jerry and Scott are also researching a grant through Minnesota Power.

NANOWRIMO:

We were told that Deb had around 15 people in her November Novel class in Pine River. We hope to get a report on that.

realgoodwords:

We are discussing the possibility of recording some of us doing readings from TS19 to be on the Heidi Holtan show realgoodwords on KAXE in Grand Rapids. Scott is going to pursue this for us.

BLANK CANVAS:

We are getting some items ready to go to the Blank Canvas Gallery for the Boutique. We will have a couple of 20×20 books over there and also some gift packs of 3 of our older Talking Stick books. Tarah will take them there tomorrow, Monday, Nov. 22.

WRITING EVENTS:

Jerry plans to put on another weekend workshop at his place near Nimrod. He is now looking at the dates of June 24-26. We will limit it to one instructor and 20 writers again, but it will be two nights instead of one. Jerry will send the info to Sharon to send out to our group from 2010 to give them first choice of attending again.

Celebration of Prairie Gate Press event is coming up on March 25 and 26, 2011 in Morris MN. For more information, go to litfest@morris.umn.edu. There will be readings and workshops. Speakers include Philip Bryant, Eric Gansworth, Kiese Layman, and Mary Rose O’Reilly.

MISCELLANEOUS:

Jerry is working on his collection of stories for his next book. These are stories about people in Good Shepherd Assisted Living.

Jerry will soon be talking to Jocelyn Hale of the Loft regarding the Loft Outreach program. We want to be involved with having more Loft instructors putting on workshops in our area.

Sharon will be sending out emails to find out what kinds of workshops our JWB members would like to attend.

READINGS:

Several of the new attendees and several of our regular members read things they have been working on. Others gave good suggestions and critique.

The main focus of our group is to try to assist our writers to be published. A big part of that is reading your work to us and accepting criticism and critique.

Hope to see you next time!

Sharon and Tarah