The Rowan Museum at 202 N. Main St., has available the newly released ěHow the North Carolina Militia Helped Start the Civil War,î by Phillip Hatfield, Ph.D., of Raeford, author of also recently released ěRowan Rifles.î
From the back cover: ěThe Civil War didnít actually begin in April 1861 as popular history suggests. Although rarely mentioned by historians, a band of militia from the Wilmington area captured Fort Caswell and Fort Johnston on the Cape Fear River almost two months before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. North Carolina Governor John W. Ellis apologized to President James Buchanan, who responded by telling Ellis that should North Carolina secede, it would be the grounds for using force to secure the forts. The ensuing political storm aggravated tensions between North Carolina and the United States to the degree that in many ways, the Civil War was already in progress when Lincoln took office. Ellis ordered the militia to re-capture the forts along the Cape Fear River. This time however, the winds of war were blowing across the old North State and no apology was offered.î
Hatfield completed a doctorate at Fielding University in Santa Barbara, Calif., and is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He served during rescue operations following Hurricane Katrina. He has published four books and numerous articles related to the Civil War in North Carolina and West Virginia.
The $14 book is available at the museum, which is open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 1-4 p.m.
Writing residency program
Registration is open for the North Carolina Writersí Networkís 2011 Squire Summer Writing Residency, July 14-17 at the Hilton Riverfront in New Bern.
The residency is open only to the first 50 registrants, who can choose one of the following workshops: Creative Nonfiction with Virginia Holman; Poetry with Peter Makuck; or Fiction with Liza Wieland.
ěThe … residency has become one of our most beloved programs,î NCWN executive director Ed Southern said. ěItís most effective at forming close bonds between writers from across the state, which is what the network is here to do.î
This year, the residency has been extended from three days to four, with two additional workshop sessions and an extra evening program.
The residency offers an intensive course in a chosen genre, with 10 hour-and-a-half sessions over the four days of the program. Registrants work in-depth on their own manuscript samples, as well as their colleaguesí, while also studying the principles of the genre with their instructor.
In addition to the workshops, the 2011 Squire Summer Writing Residency will feature a panel discussion on publishing and bookselling, and readings by faculty and registrants.
More information about the Squire Summer Writing Residency can be found at www.ncwriters.org or by calling 336-293-8844.
Holman is the author of Rescuing Patty Hearst: Growing Up Sane in a Decade Gone Mad, which was chosen as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Authors Selection and a Boston Globe Recommended Read. Holman has also published essays and articles in DoubleTake Magazine, Redbook, Women’s Health, Prevention, Glamour, Self, O Magazine, More, Book Magazine, the Washington Post, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Hartford Courant, and numerous other publications. She teaches in the creative writing program at UNC Wilmington.
Makuckís collection Long Lens: New & Selected Poems, released in 2010, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He has also published two collections of short stories, Breaking and Entering and Costly Habits; the latter was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Founder and editor of Tar River Poetry from 1978 to 2006, he is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus at East Carolina University. His poems and stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Georgia Review, The Hudson Review, Poetry, The Sewanee Review, The North American Review, The Gettysburg Review, and The Nation, among others.
Wieland has published three novels (The Names of the Lost, Bombshell, and A Watch of Nightingales); three collections of short fiction (Discovering America, You Can Sleep While I Drive, and the new book Quickening); as well as a book of poems (Near Alcatraz). She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, and the North Carolina Arts Council, and has won two Pushcart Prizes. She teaches at East Carolina University, where she is the fiction editor at the North Carolina Literary Review, and lives near Oriental.
Attendees take meals together, and are encouragedóbut not requiredóto stay in guest rooms that will be set aside for this conference.
The Squire Summer Writing Residency is named in honor of the late Chick and Elizabeth Daniels Squire, whose support made the residency possible.