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Featured Presenter Chris Arvidson to Present at High Country Writers Meeting, Feb. 8

Local author Chris Arvidson will be the featured presenter at the regular meeting of the High Country Writers at the Watauga County Public Library on Thursday, February 8, 2018, at 10:00 am.  The program is free and open to the public.

Ms. Arvidson co-edited The Love of Baseball: Essays by Lifelong Fans with Diana Nelson Jones, a longtime reporter and columnist with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Ms. Arvidson told the Winston-Salem Journal, “Diana and I came up with a list of everyone we knew who were (baseball) freaks and have good stories. It was easy to come up with 30 people.” Ms. Arvidson contributed her own essay, “Nothing Else Like It,” about the Detroit Tigers’ magical run to the World Series title in 1984.

In addition to The Love of Baseball, she has edited Reflections on the New River: New Essays, Poems and Personal Stories and Mountain Memoirs: An Ashe County Anthology.

Her evolution as an artist has been influenced by mentors from her MFA program at  Goucher College, writers she has met through volunteering for Ashe County’s On the Same Page Literary Festival, which will be held September 11-15 in 2018, and  “… several wonderful writing teachers who have helped me stop being timid with my work. Now, at this point in my life, there’s isn’t much I’m afraid to say or write about — a great gift for a writer.”

Presently she is an adjunct professor in the UNC Charlotte English Department, and co-founder of Wordkeepers, a bi-monthly salon for writers and readers that gives writers around Ashe County a chance to read 5-minute excerpts from their work. The writing salons have been held every other month for 10  years, routinely drawing 20 to 30 writers. She has also participated in an archeological dig sponsored by UNC Charlotte in Jerusalem  for three summers.  

High Country Writers has been “energizing writers since 1995.”  Regular meetings are at the Watauga County Public Library on the second and fourth Thursdays of most months from 10 am to noon, and speakers’ presentations are co-sponsored by the library.  HCW members present writing / publishing skills workshops from 10 am to noon the first Thursday of most months, partnering with Watauga County Arts Council to offer them at Art Space.  For more information and a current calendar, visit http://highcountrywriters.tripod.com/.  If weather forces the library to close, this program will be cancelled. Guests are welcome. Membership is $15 annually.