Rose Glen Literary Festival 2018


Mark your calendars now to attend the Rose Glen Literary Festival on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018 at the Sevierville Convention Center. This year’s keynote speaker is Wiley Cash who is a writer in residence at the University of North Carolina-Ashville and also teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Fiction and Nonfiction Writing at Southern New Hampshire University. Cash holds a B.A. in Literature from the University of North Carolina-Asheville, an M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, and a Ph.D. in

English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette. Cash’s stories have appeared in The Crab Orchard Review, Roanoke Review and the Carolina Quarterly. His essays on Southern Literature have appeared in American Literary Realism, The South Carolina Review, and other publications. All programs at the Festival are free with the exception of the luncheon ($20 per person.) Tickets may be purchased at the Sevierville Chamber of Commerce.

Other exciting featured authors, presentations and workshops at the 2017 Rose Glen Literary Festival:

9:15- 10: a.m. David Madden, LSU Robert Penn Warren Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and the author of such novels as

Cassandra Singing and The Suicide’s Wife, a CBS Movie of the week in 1979 that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. His collection of short stories includes The New Orleans of Possibilities; On The Big Wind, and The Last Bizarre Tale. Other works include Hair of the Dog, Pleasure Dome and Abducted by Circumstances.

9:15-10 a.m. Bren McClain, author of One Good Mama Bone, is a two time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project and recipient of the 2005 Fiction Fellowship by the South Carolina Arts Commission.

9:30-11 a.m. Workshop by Christopher Herbert, author of Angels of Detroit. Hebert is a graduate of the University of Michigan and former senior editor of the University of Michigan Press, and winner of the 2013 Friends of American Writers award. He is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Tennessee.

9:30 – 11 am. ABCs of Writing for Children Workshop conducted by Debbie Dadey and Rick Starkey. Dadey, who wrote Adventures of the Bailey School Kids and the Mermaid Tales, recently released a new book, Ready, Set, Goal. Starkey, a Sevier County native who lives in a 200-year-old cabin in the Great Smoky Arts and Crafts Community where he and his wife own a magic shop and craft store, is the author of Blue Bones.

10:15-11 a.m. Kathryn Smith, author of The Gatekeeper: Missy LeHand, FDR and the Untold Story Partnership that Defined a Presidency, earned a bachelors degree in journalism at the University of Georgia, worked as a daily newspaper reporter and editor, and has been the book columnist for the Anderson Independent Mail for 20 years.

10:15-11 a.m. RB Morris, a singer-songwriter whose songs have been recorded by John Prine and Marianne Faithful, has published several books of poetry. These include Early Fires, Littoral Zones, and The Mockingbird Poems. He is the current Poet Laureate of Knoxville.

11:15 to 12: a.m Mark Powell is the author of five novels including Echolocation. He holds degrees from the Yale Divinity School, the University of South Carolina, and the Citadel. Powell, who received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Breadloaf and Sewanee Writers Conferences, was also a Fulbright Fellow to Slovakia 2014.

11:15-12:a.m Jennifer McGaha lives in a wooded Appalachian hollow where she farms and writes about family, farming and Appalachian culture. Her essays have appeared in dozens of blogs and magazines including The Good Men Project, the Chronicle of Higher Education Baltimore Fishbowl and others. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.

12:30-2 p.m. Luncheon Keynote Speaker, Wiley Cash, writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina-Asheville and teacher in the Low-Residency MFA Program in fiction and nonfiction Writing at Southern New Hampshire University.

2:15-3:30 p.m. Panel Discussion:
Bill Landry. Landry is the voice, host, narrator, and co-producer of The Heartland Series, which has aired on WBIR-TV for nearly 30 years

and, has received two Emmy Awards for directing the series. Landry holds an MFA from Trinity University at the Dallas Theater Center and a BA in Literature from the University of Tennessee. In 2009, Landry premiered his DVD production of William Bartram – An Unlikely Explorer for the 75th anniversary of the founding of The Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Sam Venable, a graduate of the University of Tennessee and author of 12 books, is a former feature writer and police reporter for the Knoxville journal and the Chattanooga News-Free Press. A member of the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame and Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame, Venable has won more than three dozen national and regional writing awards. Now retired as a humor columnist for the Knoxville News Sentinel, Venable continues to write news and outdoor columns for the paper.

Linn Stepp is On Adjunct faculty at Tusculum College where she teaches research. She has taught a variety of psychology and counseling courses for more than 16 years. Stepp has nine published novels each set in different locations around the Smoky Mountains. She and her husband have published a Smokies hiking guide.

Stephen Lyn Bales is senior naturalist at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. He has written for Smithsonian Magazine and is a regular contributor to the Tennessee Conservationist magazine. He is also a regular speaker at Wilderness Wildlife Week. His first book Natural Histories covered the history of the Tennessee Valley. Bales second book, Ghost Birds; Jim Tanner and the Quest for the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 1935-1941, recalls Jim Tanner, the only ornithologist to conduct an in-depth study of the largest woodpecker to live in the United States, the legendary ghost bird of the south.

Check out this impressive video about the history of Rose Glen and its founders who inspired the creation of the Rose Glen Literary Festival.

Oconaluftee Visitor Center Hosts Holiday Homecoming

Great Smoky Mountains National Park hosts the Oconaluftee Visitor Center Holiday Homecoming on Saturday, December 16, 2017. Park staff and volunteers will provide hands-on traditional crafts and activities from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Children and adults will have the opportunity to learn about and experience some of the traditions surrounding an Appalachian Christmas.

The visitor center will be decorated for the holiday season including an exhibit on Christmas in the mountains. Hot apple cider and cookies will be served on the porch with a fire in the fireplace. In addition, the park will host the monthly acoustic old time jam session from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.

“Musical expression was and still is often a part of daily life in the southern mountains, and mountain music is strongly tied to the Smokies history and culture,” said Lynda Doucette, Supervisory Park Ranger, Oconaluftee Visitor Center. “This month our music jam will focus on traditional holiday tunes. We would like to invite musicians to play and our visitors to join us in singing traditional Christmas carols and holiday songs as was done in old days.”

The Oconaluftee Visitor Center is located on Newfound Gap Road (U.S. Highway 441), two miles north of Cherokee, N.C. For more

information call the visitor center at 828-497-1904. All activities are free and open to the public. Generous support of this event is provided by the Great Smoky Mountains Association.

The Oconaluftee Visitor Center is a must stop for any visit to the Great Smoky Mountains! Entrance to the Center is free and it is open to

the public every day except Christmas day. The Visitor Center has plenty of parking for cars, RVs and motor coaches. Public restrooms and vending machines are available to the left of the Center’s main entrance. You will find everything you need to experience the Park at your own pace.

The Visitor Center offers a unique view into the area’s past at the Mountain Farm Museum – a collection of historic log buildings from the late 19th century that were relocated here from all over North Carolina in the 1950’s.

41st Christmas Past Celebration

Sugarlands Visitors Center will host the Great Smoky Mountains 41st annual Festival of Christmas Past celebration. The event is scheduled for Saturday, December 9th from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. at Sugarlands Visitor Center a half mile south of the Gatlinburg national park entrance. This event is cosponsored by the Great Smoky Mountains Associationand is free to the public.

The festival will include old-time mountain music, traditional shape note singing, mountain craft demonstrations, and a living history walk. Visitors can also experience these traditions through hands-on activities such as make-and-take craft stations. Hot apple cider will also be served throughout the day.

“Around Christmas time, people gathered in churches, homes, and schools where they celebrated the holiday through music, storytelling, and crafts,” said North District Resource Education Supervisor Stephanie Sutton. “The Festival of Christmas Past allows us to pause and remember some of these traditions.”

Make sure and add all the fun scheduled to your calendar so you don’t miss a single minute!

9:30 Shape Note Singing
11:00 Old-time mountain music with Lost Mill
11:00 Memories Walk
12:00 Old-time mountain music with Boogertown Gap
1:00 Smoky Mountain Historical Society
2:00 Appalachian Christmas Music and Storytelling – NPS Staff

The popular Christmas Memories Walk will be held at 11:00 a.m. Costumed interpreters will lead a short walk from the visitor center and talk about life in the mountains during the holidays. Through this living history program, visitors will experience the spirit of the season in the mountains during the early days.

The Sugarlands Visitor Center is a must stop for any visit to the Great Smoky Mountains! Entrance to the center is free and it is open to the public every day except Christmas day. The Visitor Center has plenty of parking for cars, RVs, and motor coaches. Public restrooms and vending machines are available to the left of the center’s main entrance. Here you will find everything you need to experience the park at your own pace.

Biltmore Christmas Celebration

Biltmore Christmas Celebration is a must for young and old! It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas at Biltmore House which rises in the early morning mountain mist like a fairy-tale castle. There is really no bad season to visit Biltmore, the largest private home in America, located in Asheville, N.C., but possibly the most amazing time (and our personal favorite) is for Candle Christmas Evenings held between November 3 and January 6, and is the only time of the year that the mansion opens at night. Each year Biltmore decorators select a different theme, and this year’s “Gilded Age Christmas” takes cues from stories told and retold about early Vanderbilt family celebrations. A towering 55-foot Norway spruce, ablaze with 45,000 twinkling lights, and hand-lit luminaries welcome guests as they arrive along a long circular driveway that surrounds the front lawn. Firelight reflects on thousands of ornaments that decorate dozens of Christmas trees located throughout the mansion’s grand rooms, but the most amazing is a 34-ft. Frazier Fir, ornamented from top to bottom and surrounded by elaborately wrapped gifts, that forms the focal point in the immense Banquet Hall. Miles of garlands festoon doorways, mantels, chandeliers and hallways and live performances of Christmas music begin at the entrance and continue throughout the house
The magnificent French renaissance-style structure, which encompasses 80,000 square feet, was commissioned by George W. Vanderbilt in 1889 and christened with a spectacular Christmas Eve party held for his friends in 1895. Vanderbilt, who fell in love with the western North Carolina area after visiting several times with his mother, purchased 125,000 acres (land that included more than 50 farms and at least five cemeteries) in order to build his incredible Blue Ridge Mountain estate.

Evening tours range from $70 to $85 for adults as compared to daytime tours priced from $50 to $60. Whichever you choose there are plenty of activities to justify the cost. Daily seminars include decorating with holiday wreaths and creating holiday tablescapes are available and the estate’s conservatory hosts an annual poinsettia and tropical plant display. Santa Claus welcomes the younger set in Antler Hill Village (home to several eateries, the Biltmore Winery and gift shops) each weekend through Dec. 20. Those who prefer the natural quiet and serene sense of peace the holiday season confers may opt to drive through the now 8,000 acre estate and walk through the lavish 75 acres of Biltmore gardens, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, of New York’s Central Park fame. A variety of tours and package deals are available by visiting www.biltmore.com. Where you can also book al tour tickets online.

Raise a glass; find your pint and support the Blue Ridge Parkway 2018.

Raise a glass; find your pint and support the Blue Ridge Parkway. For the second time in as many years breweries from Asheville to the High Country and Virginia raised funds for the scenic Blue Ridge Parkway and its “Find Your Pint” event. Each brewery, some of which  created special beers to honor the highway and others, who highlighted flagship brews, donated a portion of sales to support the non-profit Blue Ridge Parkway Foundation which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The Blue Ridge Parkway is considered the “sister” national park to the Great Smoky Mountains and a portion of the participating breweries are found in the HeySmokies region. More than 15 million people visited the 469-mile scenic highway last year; a number that exceeds the

combined visitation of Yellowstone, Yosemite and Grand Canyon National Parks. A Passport Program encourages beer fans to collect Parkway Beer Passport stickers and booklets available at participating breweries. Be sure and set your calendar for 2018 and the 3rd annual find your pint tour!