Our annual Garden Party/Meeting is Thursday, May 3, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. This is a time for members and their guests to connect with one another and celebrate another great year with WNBA. The party is hosted by Barbie Chadwick and the rest of the Nashville board, who provide drinks and appetizers. Watch for an email with more details coming soon.

On April 5, author and WNBA Nashville member Bren McClain will talk about her book, One Good Mama Bone, a WNBA Great Group Reads pick for National Reading Group Month 2017. You can hear all about it at our next meeting, Thursday, April 5, 6 p.m. (5 for greeting and eating) at Jonathan’s Grille in Green Hills. Meetings are free and open to the public. 

In the meantime, here’s a little bite to whet your appetite!  Set in the early 1950s in rural South Carolina, One Good Mama Bone is the story of an unlikely friendship between two mothers, a human named Sarah Creamer and a bovine named Mama Red, who teaches Sarah what it means to be a mother. All of this is set against the backdrop of the 4-H tradition of feeding out a steer for the Grand Champion title.  

Join us Thursday, March 1, as we welcome Susannah Felts, Co-founder of The Porch Writers’ Collective, as our guest speaker. Susannah is a fiction writer, freelance writer, teacher, editor, and native Nashvillian. We meet at Jonathan’s in Green Hills, with our program, which is free and open to the public, beginning at 6 p.m. Arrive early to mingle with attendees, starting at 5:00, maybe order a bite to eat. Bring a friend!

In 2009, after many years away from her hometown, she returned to put down roots with her family in East Nashville. Previously, Susannah taught creative writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Watkins College of Art, Design & Film, and in several other youth and community settings. Her first novel, This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record, was published in 2008 by Featherproof Books. Susannah was the recipient of the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship in Fiction for 2013. She has been awarded the Tennessee Williams Scholarship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, as well as residencies at the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences. Her work has appeared in such publications as The Oxford American, Literary Hub, Longreads, StorySouth, The Sun, Quarterly West, Hobart, Five Chapters, Wigleaf, and Quick Fiction, among others. She earned her bachelor of arts degree with highest honors in creative writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and holds a master in fine arts in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Susannah is also a contributing writer for Chapter 16, Humanities Tennessee’s site devoted to literary culture. Check out The Porch here: http://www.porchtn.org.

Please join us on Thursday, February 1, when Jolina Petersheim will share her story with us. We meet at Jonathan’s in Green Hills, with our program, which is free and open to the public, beginning at 6 p.m. Arrive early to mingle with attendees, starting at 5:00, maybe order a bite to eat. Bring a friend!

Jolina Petersheim’s most recent book is The Divide. She is the critically acclaimed author of The Alliance, The Midwife, and The Outcast, which Library Journal called “outstanding . . . fresh and inspirational” in a starred review and named one of the best books of 2013. That book also became an Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, Christian Booksellers Association, and Amazon bestseller and was featured in Huffington Post’s Fall Picks, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and the Tennessean. CBA Retailers + Resources called her second book, The Midwife, “an excellent read [that] will be hard to put down,” and Booklist selected The Alliance as one of its Top 10 Inspirational Fiction Titles for 2016. Jolina’s nonfiction writing has been featured in Reader’s Digest, Writer’s Digest, and Today’s Christian Woman.

She and her husband share the same unique Amish and Mennonite heritage that originated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, but they now live in the mountains of Tennessee with their three young daughters.

WNBA-Nashville Board Member Amy Lyles Wilson first met Jolina while she was working on her first novel. Even then, Amy Lyles knew Jolina would “make it” as a writer. Her dedication to the craft is inspiring. Plus, she’s a delightful human being! Please join us as we hear Jolina’s story.