WVW Podcast Episode 43

Episode 43 of the WV Writers Podcast features an interview with WV Writers' own Richard A. Lewis. Richard has served the organization in the past as Parliamentarian, First Vice President and Treasurer. He recently published his first collection of short fiction entitled Naked Man's Rock. We joined him at his home in Lewisburg to talk about it.

Download it at our Podcast Page or subscribe in iTunes.

WV Writers Podcast Episode #42 Now Available

We return with Episode 42 of the WV Writers Podcast, another of our patent-pending recorded live readings (Q: "But if it's recorded, how can it be live?" A: "Zzzzzzzzipit")

This recorded live reading comes from the September 21st Brown Bag Tuesday session at Carnegie Hall WV in Lewisburg and features WV Writers' current parliamentarian, author Belinda Anderson. Belinda will be reading a selection from her three collections of short stories, The Well Ain't Dry Yet, The Bingo Cheaters and Buckle Up, Buttercup assisted by Elizabeth Spangler and Dr. Larry Davis.

Find it HERE.

WV Writers Podcast #41 Now Online

We return with Episode 41 of the WV Writers Podcast, another of our patent-pending recorded live readings (Q: "But if it's recorded, how can it be live?" A: "Shhhh. Don't you worry your purty little head.")

This recorded live reading comes from the September 16th Literary Tea session at the Greenbrier Valley Theatre in Lewisburg. WV Writers' featured reader is poet Miles Dean, honorable mention in the Humor Category of the 2010 WVW Annual Writing Contest as well as voted the 1st place winner in poetry for the Writers Wall at the 2010 Summer Conference.

The Literary Tea series continues October 7 and October 14. They take place at 5:30 p.m. at the Greenbrier Valley Theatre in downtown Lewisburg.

If you're a member or extended friend of WV Writers, Inc. we invite you to submit your own recorded live readings to wvwpodcast@gmail.com.

Hear Episode 41 at the following link...

http://podcast.wvwriters.org/2010/09/episode-41-2010-literary-tea-recorded.html

Podcast Episode 33: Belinda Anderson Interview

We had intended to podcast our Pitch Session Primer interview with Christine Witthohn for this week's podcast, but due to a wicked case of laryngitis followed by a convention trip, we've had to delay that recording until next week.

Instead, this week we're speaking with Belinda Anderson, writer, journalist, nomination for WV Writers' parliamentarian and presenter at the 2010 WV Writers Summer Conference. We cover Belinda's extensive past history with WV Writers, what she will be teaching at the conference and cover some of her current and past writing projects that she's involved with, including an oral history project detailing the history of a lost community located atop Wolf Creek Mountain, near Alderson, WV.

Check it out at our podcast page... Podcast.WVWriters.org.

MOMCAST 2010

This week, the WVW Podcast celebrates Mother's Day with a triple-sized MOMCAST 2010. This special podcast features poems, stories, essays and memories as phoned in by our members and sundry listeners.

Contributors inclue Elvera Denning, Terry McNemar, Tracy Seiffers, Sandra Clay, Barbara Wittington, Llewellyn McKernan, Sal Buttacci, Kate Dooley, John Nagle, C.J. Farnsworth, Dianne Tarantini, Tim Armentrout, Susan DeVan, Charlotte Sneed, Linda Hoagland, Barbara Smith, Cat Pleska, Heidi Hartwicker and Eric Fritzius.

Download it for yourselves at our Podcast Page.

Article on WV Book Festival and Mary Lucille DeBerry

The Charleston Gazette has a nice article on the subject of the WV Book Festival, as well as WVW member Mary Lucille Deberry's first poetry collection, Bertha Butcher's Coat.

Read the article HERE. And hear our podcast with Mary Lucille, rebroadcast last weekend, HERE.

WV Writers Podcast seeks Mother's Day Poems and Stories

UPDATE 5/6/10: The Hotline for the WV Writers MomCast 2010 is now closed.

In honor of Mother's Day (May 9, 2010), the WV Writers Podcast is seeking your poems, short stories and essays on the topic of your mom. Furthermore, we'd like to broadcast you reading them.

In order to do this, we've set up a special Mother's Day Hotline which will allow us to record your poems, stories, etc. and be able to play them back on our Mother's Day Podcast, which will be posted May 9.

The instructions for this are as follows:

1. Have your piece in hand.
   
2. Phone our Mother's Day hotline at 304-661-9745 (this is a WV-based cellular number, so long distance charges may apply). Wait for the voicemail to pick up (usually after 4 rings) and listen to the opening.
   
3. After the beep, please state your name, your town and anything you think people might need to know about your piece. After that...
   
4. Read your story, essay or poem. Please try to keep them under 2 minutes 45 seconds in length. Anything longer than this will be automatically cut off by the voicemail. If you have a longer piece, feel free to call back and continue it in a second segment. However, please limit the entire piece to between 4 and 5 minutes. Preference may be given to pieces shorter than 2:45. Depending on the number of pieces we receive, we may or may not be able to use all of them.
   
5. If you mess up while reading, it's no problem. Just pause and then say "THREE, TWO, ONE..." and start where you left off. We'll edit out the messups on our end.
   
6. The hotline will take Mother's Day pieces through May 8, 2010. (After that, we'll try to keep the line open for Recorded Live Readings for possible use in future shows.)
   

This is something of an experiment, so please help us out by participating. Everybody's got a good mother story in them, so please share yours.

Participation is not limited to WV Writers members, though, if we have more entries than we can use, preference will be shown to our members.

WVW Podcast Episode 28

Episode 28 of the WVW Podcast is now online. In it we celebrate National Poetry Month by playing part 1 of our two part recorded live reading taken from the WVW co-sponsored poetry edition of the literary tea series this past November at the Greenbrier Valley Theatre in Lewisburg. The featured poets for this recording are Sarah Crickenberger (2nd place winner of the Short Poetry category of the 2009 WVW Writing Contest) and our member Sammye Lewis.

Find the episode available at our podcast page...

http://podcast.wvwriters.org/

Podcast Episode 27 Now Online

The WV Writers Podcast Episode 27 is now online featuring an interview with 2009 WV Writers Summer Conference success story Sheila "S.G." Redling. Sheila is a morning radio show cohost at WKEE in Huntington and the author of a book called Storyteller that is currently making the rounds of publishers via her literary agent. The details of how she came to be in this position are illuminated in this podcast. (We'll give you a hint: it has something to do with the 2009 WV Writers Summer Conference, not to mention a healthy dose of talent.)

Find Episode 27 at our new address of Podcast.WVWriters.org.

WVW Podcast: Contestcast 2

Episode 25 (a.k.a. CONTESTCAST 2) of the WV Writers Podcast is now online. We're a wee bit past the mid-way point for the 2010 WV Writers Annual Writing Contest, so we thought it would be prudent to check in with our adult contest coordinator, Steve Goff, to find out how things are going. Steve answers more of your frequently asked questions, discuss the list of contest judges and reveal some of the categories in which your odds are better for winning this year.

Download it from our podcast page http://www.wvwriters.org/2010/02/episode-25-contestcast-2.html

Or subscribe with iTunes.

WV Writers Podcast: Keith Pitzer Tribute with Pops Walker

Episode 24 of the WV Writers Podcast is now available. It is a special double-size episode in tribute to musician Keith Pitzer, who was a friend of WV Writers and of this podcast. Keith died after a battle with cancer on December 22 , 2009. Joining us for the episode is Pops Walker, who was a good friend of Keith's. We talk about Keith the man, the musician and the tireless servant of the ecological health of the Cheat River. We'll also hear some of the outtakes from my interview with him last June, including some of the amazing music he made alongside his wife Joan.

Find Episode 24 posted on our podcast website.

Contestcast 2010

Parts 1 and 2 of the 2010 WV Writers Contestcast are now online! In them I am joined by special guests Terry "El Presidente" McNemar and Steve "El Coordinador de la Competencia" Goff to talk about the WVW Annual Writing Contest and detail some of the changes you need to know about and the unchanged things you still need to pay attention to. It's a veritable digital contest primer.

In Part 1 we primarily discuss the adult contest, while in Part 2 the main topic is the New Mountain Voices Student Contest. We also get a sneak peek at not only some of the key judges for the contest but some more of the major presenters for the 2010 Summer Conference. El President McNemar also spills the time period we can expect ALL the details on the conference to be revealed. (Hint: it'll be sooner, rather than later.)

Find the Contestcast on our podcast website or subscribe through iTunes.

WVW Podcast: Lee Maynard Recorded Live Reading

Our 6th WVW Podcast Bonus Show is now online. It features a recorded live reading from Lee Maynard's appearance at the WV Book Festival, in October. Mr. Maynard reads the first chapter of his new novel-in-memoir-form The Pale Light of Sunset: Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life, published by West Virginia University Press.

Be sure to also check out Episodes 21 and 22 for parts 1 and 2 of our podcast of the conversation between Lee and Cat Pleska.

Get the Lee Maynard Recorded Live Reading HERE.

Podcast Episode 21: A conversation with Lee Maynard

Episode 21 of the WVW Podcast is now available, featuring a conversation between WV Writers 1st Vice President Cat Pleska and Lee Maynard, author of the book Crum, its followup Screaming with the Cannibals and the new novel-in-memoir-form The Pale Light of Sunset: Scattershots and Hallucinations in an Imagined Life, published by West Virginia University Press.


As those of you who've attended Lee's workshops at previous WV Writers Summer Conferences well know, he's an extremely talented writer who specializes in gut-level writing. This week's part of the conversation explores some of that as well as his writing discipline, his philosophy on truth in memoir vs. storytelling and his feelings about West Virginia.

Hear it for yourself at our PODCAST PAGE.

WVW Podcast Bonus Show 4

Our 4th WVW Podcast Bonus Show is now online and features trimmings from our Episode 12 interview with Pops Walker.

We also pass along the results of the Shenandoah Valley Acoustic Roots Fest and Songwriting Contest, which we talked to Pops about in Episode 12.

Click HERE to go THERE.

WVW Podcast Episode 17 Now Online

Episode 17 of the WVW Podcast has now been posted. It's our second recorded live reading, this time originating from a session of the Greenbrier Valley Theatre's October Literary Tea series, from 2007. The featured material is the short story "Faux Fangs" from Beverly Pauley's collection Gothic Bedtime Stories. This story is the first appearance of Bev's reoccurring character, elderly West Virginia vampire Rutherford Zucks.

The episode also has information about the 2009 Literary Teas as well as a preview of what WV Writers will be doing at the 2009 WV Book Festival in Charleston and some hints about presenters for our upcoming 2010 Summer Conference.

Check it out at our PODCAST PAGE.

WVW Podcast Bonus Show 2

The second bonus show for the WV Writers Podcast has now been posted. It features conversational outtakes with Dolly Withrow and Barbara Smith recorded for last week's special podcast. Plus we have a further interruption from my dog.

Find it HERE or on iTunes.

WVW Podcast Shirley Young Campbell Tribute Special

(THE PODCAST LINK BELOW HAS BEEN UPDATED)

This week we present a special double-sized podcast episode in tribute to the lady without whom there would not be a WV Writers, Shirley Young Campbell. Mrs. Campbell passed away August 17, 2009. For this special episode, we interview Dr. Barbara Smith, Dolly Withrow and Kirk Judd, each counted among the charter members of WV Writers and longtime friends of Mrs. Campbell. We discuss Mrs. Campbell's many accomplishments in promoting the writing and writers of WV, her role as a catalyst in the creation of West Virginia Writers, Inc., her co-founding of Mountain State Press, her own writing and many publications, what she was like as a person, and her role as the "Literary Mother" of so many of the finest writers of our state and beyond.

For those of you unfamiliar with the history of our organization, this is a podcast not to be missed.

Many thanks to Phyllis Wilson Moore for her tremendous help in the research for this podcast.

http://www.wvwriters.org/2009/09/episode-16-shirley-young-campbell.html

WV Writers Podcast Episode 15 Now Online

Episode 15 of the WV Writers Podcast is now online. In it, we talk to storyteller Susanna "Granny Sue" Holstein. She’s been a featured storytelling performer at events from Bellingham, Washington to Boston, Massachusetts and points in between. She's especially well known, however, for being a West Virginia storyteller, focusing much of her repertoire on WV history, ghost stories, Appalachian tales and ballads.

We talk about how she began storytelling, the fluidity of the artform, the skills required to do it correctly and, of course, we'll hear one of her more famous stories.

Download it HERE or subscribe with iTunes.

This week on the WV Writers Podcast

This Friday, the WV Writers Podcast will broadcast its first recorded live reading.

Our subject will be a live reading given by author Joey Madia from his novel Jester Knight.

You can see the trailer for this book by clicking the book cover on the right.

Tune in Friday morning, August 14, for Episode 14 of the WV Writers Podcast.