Welcome to my website! Let's catch up.

LMU

Appalachian Reading Series

This semester we have three great installments in the Appalachian Reading Series.  Spartanburg, SC native and now Nashvillian singer-songwriter-memoirist Marshall Chapman will be at LMU on September 8 to share work including excerpts from her latest book They Came to Nashville and her newest CD Big Lonesome. The show is in the Arnold Auditorium in the Lincoln Museum, which is located just inside the main gates of Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, TN. Show starts at 7 PM. A Q&A will follow, as will a signing with plenty of books and CDs for sale. This event is co-sponsored by the LMU program in music.

Joseph Bathanti, author of Restoring Sacred Art and The High Heart, among other titles, was born and raised in Pittsburg, PA, but came to the south just after college and found love. He lives in Boone, NC and teaches at Appalachian State University.  This novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and poet will teach a community workshop at LMU on Sunday afternoon, September 25 and give a reading at LMU on Monday September 26. 

Pamela Duncan, author of the novels Moon Woman, Plant Life, and The Big Beautiful will teach a community workshop at LMU on Sunday afternoon, November 13 and give a reading on Monday evening, November 14. 

Bathanti and Duncan are participating in a new three-day mini residency that includes the events at LMU plus a visit to an area school. This part of the Appalachian Reading Series is funded in part by South Arts.

LMU Courses

I'm teaching undergraduate courses in fiction writing and in literary publishing and programming this fall.

Our fall semester Community Class will be on memoir writing. The class will meet every Tuesday evening from 7-9 PM, October 4- November 8. Class will take place in Room 105, DCOM, on LMU's campus. If you live near LMU and are 18 or older, email me for more information!

WHAT ABOUT SUMMER 2011?

 

Mountain Heritage Literary Festival

Thank you to everyone who made the 2011 LMU Mountain Heritage Literary Festival as great success. Denton Loving and I were so fueled by the great weekend and the good response, we sat down today to begin planning next year's event. Above poet and keynote speaker Kathryn Stripling Byer poses with the members of Tazewell Pike. Don't be surprised to see Kay performing with the band as she did at MHLF. Below are photos of cast members of Higher Ground: Talking Dirt from Southeast Technical and Community College in Harlan County, KY, LMU 2011 Valedictorian and Jesse Stuart Fellow Sara West, contest winner and participant reading emcee Larry Thacker, singer-songwriter Belinda Smith with Kathy Whitson and poet Aaron Smith, poet Connie Green with poet Marianne Worthington. Look for an article about this year's festival at www.chapter16.org/.

 

On the road

NOVEL PROCESS #5 started last weekend at Learning Events in Sweetwater, TN.

Novel group #5 started this summer, followed by memoir group 3! If you've been thinking about signing up for the extended novel workshop or the memoir workshops at Learning Events, now's the time to contact Sue Richardson Orr.  Sue Orr and I continue our collaboration through Learning Events in Sweetwater, Tennessee. For more information on these low-residencey workshops, contact Sue Richardson Orr at Learning Events. 

TABLE ROCK WRITERS WORKSHOP

Sign up for my poetry workshop at Table Rock! If you mention my name you get a $50 discount! See--www.tablerock.org

WRITING

Somewhere amid all these doings, I’ve managed to write some poems and stories and work on my next novel.  What are you writing?

 

Sufficient Grace and What Travels With Us: Poems are available through your local independent bookseller and other popular outlets including Amazon.com. Sometimes convenience drives our shopping choices, but please make every effort to support a local independent bookseller near you. Supporting local independent businesses is a civic responsibility!

If you’ve been missing Dancing with the Gorilla, the blog is back in business.  Check out weekly posts on writing and a new Wednesday feature: Weight Watcher Wednesday. After going on high blood pressure medicine, I decided to put some healthy pressure into the equation. I’m shooting for reaching my Weight Watchers goal weight near the same time I finish my novel manuscript! Check in and see how I’m doing. More than that, get inspired. Set some writing goals of your own. What rewards work for you? What new characters, stories, and stanzas will this spring and summer bring?

 

DANCING WITH THE GORILLA

Because I'm both a writer and a writing teacher, there are features on this website for both readers and fans of Sufficient Grace and

What Travels With Us and also features for writers and aspiring writers. I hope most of what's here appeals to everyone. I had taken a hiatus from my blog: Dancing with the Gorilla: Lyric Pontifications on the Kinetics of Reading, Writing, and Revising. But I'm easing back into regular blog posts, or should I say dance steps.

There's something in Dancing with the Gorilla for anyone interested in books or stories, or anyone curious about how some stories get written. I'm a big believer that really good books are the best writing teachers. The best way to become a good reader is to appreciate what other writers have accomplished on the page. Many of my adult writing students have told me if they never publish a book, they are better readers and read better books after taking a writing workshop. That's largely what this blog is about, no pun intended: to appreciate good reading and good writing.

Tuesdays and Thursdays posts will have regular writing exercises along with the blog entries. These two-day-a-week posts are the backbone of Dancing with the Gorilla. Additional posts may be about books, events, announcements, contemplations, discoveries, surprises. Somehow it will all tie back to reading and writing, two of my favorite activities.

I hope you take a peek at Dancing with the Gorilla and keep coming back, and I hope you find other interesting and useful surprises among the site's resources. Join me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and SheWrites, where I’m limping and lurching into the use of 21st century technology!

With warm regards,

Darnell