The Intersection of Music and Writing

2021-10-28T13:59:56Z

For Immediate Release

The Chattanooga Writers Guild Presents “The Intersection of Music and Writing”

7:00 PM, Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Join us via zoom

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84153116289?pwd=V1Q0a1NQeGhlQTBMT29XMXUxc1FRUT09

The intersection of Music and Writing is a presentation by three talented musician writers. Two are songwriters and the third has written and produced dramatic presentations with musical content.

Jennifer Daniels Neal is a performing songwriter, author, and teaching artist. She and her husband, Jeff Neal, have released nine music albums, a picture book, and two human children into the world (boy/girl twins, so…bonus!) The Locke Box is Jenn’s first novel and the first time she has released a project under her married name (not counting the kids). She wrote Songs from The Locke Box as a companion music album. Visit JenniferDaniels.com to learn more. Songwriting IS Writing | jenniferdaniels

Talking Writing: Jennifer Daniels, Part I (wutc.org)

Peggy Douglas is a playwright, performance poet, and musician with various string bands in Chattanooga. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals. In 2014, Douglas shifted her focus to writing poetic monologue plays about her native Tennessee roots that are set to music and produced as dramatic theatre:

Douglas has a Ph.D. has been a college professor in sustainable economics and education pedagogy for thirty-nine years. She has co-written two academic books, Women in Higher Education: Empowering Change and Radical Learning.

She has served on many non-profit boards in Chattanooga such as Chattanooga Writers Guild, Center for Mindful Living, Mark Making, Chattanooga Folk School, and Metropolitan Ministries Advisory Committee.
TWISTED ROOTS at the Mountain Arts Community Center – YouTube

Kathy Veazey
I’ve been singing and playing (keyboard and guitar) in bands in Chattanooga on an irregular basis my whole adult life. Along with my former band Lumbar Five, I’ve recorded two albums of (mostly) my original songs. My husband John Rawlston (also in Lumbar Five) and I currently perform as the duo TN Ruminators. I began writing songs in my twenties (from angsty poetry I kept in my journal) and I can’t seem to stop. I love the songwriting process; I can get completely consumed by a song until it’s finished. During the pandemic, I found that I also like working with other poets and songwriters. I retired from my job as a special education teacher a few years ago and I love having the freedom to geek out on learning more about my instruments and on writing songs. You can hear some of our music at (2) The TN Ruminators | Facebook

Southern Festival of Books

2021-10-04T21:13:37Z

The Southern Festival of Books is happening this week!!

Humanities Tennessee proudly presents the 33rd annual Southern Festival of Books, a free event happening this Fall online: October 9 and 10 plus more dates.

This year’s Festival will feature 100 authors, offering virutal attendees the opportunity to connect with their favorite authors from a variety of genres spanning from nonfiction, poetry, mystery and more.

More information at HERE

Workshop: 5 Big Rules of Plot

2021-10-04T21:00:01Z

The Southern Lit Alliance is hosting a fantastic creative writing workshop on Sunday October 17 from 2 to 5pm (ET)

Coming up with ideas for a new world or new characters isn’t often too intimidating, but when faced with creating an entire plot, a lot of writers freeze up. That’s because most people aren’t aware of the 5 Big Rules that will direct your efforts and help you come up with consistently good stories. Come to the class with an idea; leave with an outline. There’s no better way to kickstart your writing project than to take this class.

On Zoom: $20- More information and registration at Southern Lit Alliance

Wesley A. Fulkerson

Wesley is a recent transplant to Chattanooga from Southern California. He is the author of ten books, including the Starfall Trilogy, Writing With Purpose, and For Whom the Sun Sings. He is an award-winning screenwriter (Save My Seoul, 2017 – Jubilee Media), the former head screenwriter for Arbella Studios, and currently freelances for a number of Los Angeles based production companies. He received a degree with honors in Marketing from USC’s prestigious Marshall School of Business (2012) and presents a powerful combination of creativity and pragmatism. Having started out as a self-publisher and later disseminating his work through traditional publishing, his is the epitome of the modern writer’s journey.

FESTIVAL!

2021-10-04T20:49:45Z

The Poetry Society of Tennessee’s (PST’s) 65th Annual Poetry Festival will be held virtually on Saturday, October 9, 2021, beginning at 1:00 pm Central Daylight Time (2:00 pm EDT). Once again, our virtual festival will be free, but registration for this event (to be held via Zoom) will be required.

More information and registration HERE

We are pleased to announce our workshop leader will be Jeff Hardin, Professor of English at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, TN. Jeff is a graduate of Austin Peay State University (B.S. in English) and the University of Alabama (M.F.A. in Poetry). He is the author of three chapbooks and six collections of poetry; more than 600 of his poems have appeared in journals ranging from The Southern Review to Hotel Amerika; and he is an editor for the online journal One

Jeff’s workshop will be on apostrophe/address poems:
In poems, we get to do what we normally might not do in real life: talk directly to plants, animals, concepts, absent people, porch rails, the hollow in a tree where bees disappear, the taste of coffee in the morning when snow is on the ground, Li Po’s empty boat, a hawk feather drifting past on a mountain stream. So many poems speak intimately and easily to people, places, things, and abstractions, and by doing so, perhaps something unique arises in our voices — a certain kind of tone, a reach toward understanding, a prayerfully considered seeking beyond what we already know.

Our tentative agenda is shown below (all times Central Daylight Time):

1:00-1:15 — Log-in and introductions
1:15-3:00 — Workshop, Jeff Hardin
3:00-3:15 — Announcement of PST Poet Laureate Award
3:15-5:00 — Announcement and Reading of 65th Annual Festival Contest Winners
5:00-5:30 — Society Announcements and Closing

October Program

2021-10-01T14:58:29Z

Our CWG monthly program on Tuesday October 12 is a workshop led by John C. Mannone

Program plan: Enormously sucessful in the past, we’re revisiting a night of writing and sharing but with a twist. After a short introduction about various length-of-time prompts, we’ll do some of the shorter ones in situ and everyone will be able to share some of their work if they want. However, the twist is this, to compare different dynamics, we’ll do (1) a prompt* where we’ll have a lengthy time to work on at home (each of might be able to share up to a 5-minute excerpt depending on attendance). At the other extreme, we’ll do (2) a 10-minute writing prompt and (3) a 5-minute writing prompt during the workshop, and have a chance to share our work. We’ll close with a group discussion about the prompts and the process. I’m looking forward to your stories and poems that these prompts will inspire.

*This early prompt— a photograph of an old doghouse

John C. Mannone runs the weekly Ekphrastic Workshop for CWG. His works appear in North Dakota Quarterly, Poetry South, Windhover, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel and hundreds of others. He’s a Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian literature awardee (2017) and celebrity judge for the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (2018). His forthcoming (2021) collections are Flux Lines: The Intersection of Science, Love, and Poetry (Linnet’s Wings Press) and Sacred Flute (Iris Press). He edits poetry for Abyss & Apex and other journals. A retired physics professor, John lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.

http://jcmannone.wordpress.com

https://www.facebook.com/jcmannone/

Use the link below to register to get the Zoom link. Please join the meeting between 6:45 and 7pm on Tuesday October 12

ZOOM

Happy 20th Birthday CWG!

2021-09-17T01:23:39Z

The 1st meeting of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild was September 11, 2001; yes that tragic day. The small group or writers decided to meet in spite of that day’s events and the group began to grow. So this month marks 20 years of supporting writers, contributing to the creative spirit of our Chattanooga, changes in leadership, seeing many of our members get published, but all of them improving in their craft, making friendships and rubbing shoulders with fellow writers, having contests and publishing the winners in our anthology, many open mics, the Chattanooga Readers and Writers Fair, radio interviews on WUTC, the critique groups that really cultivate the writers in us. Thank you Chattanooga Writers’ Guild for being here for us. Thank you all who have contributed over the years to make this happen!

A brief history of CWG is on this page of the website: HISTORY

A collection of videos, mostly interviews her: VIDEOS

Slide show from the Chattanooga Readers and Writers Fair: SLIDE SHOW