You're Reading My Mail - (if you want to know about SIBA Conference

Letter to Nancy Simpson from NCWN:

September 22, 2011


Dear Member,
Thank you for giving the North Carolina Writers’ Network the opportunity to promote your book at last weekend’s 2011 Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance conference in Charleston, SC. I staffed the Network’s table in the exhibit hall throughout the conference, where eleven books written by our members—fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in a variety of genres—were displayed.

Rumor had it that conference attendance was up from last year, and traffic was steady at the Network’s table throughout the show. Every title drew interest, from booksellers, publishers, and featured authors, as well as exhibitors such as Baker & Taylor, Ingram, and many, many more.

One publisher, seeking humor writing, was overjoyed to be handed a copy of Helen Aitken’s It Only Happens to Me…Can You Dial 9-1-1? The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines gushed over Sandra Ervin Adams’ Through a Weymouth Window and Diana Renfro‘s Spanish Doors; Margaret A. Harrell’s Keep This Quiet: My Relationship with Hunter S. Thompson and Stephanie Schmitz’ The Dead Girl generated a lot of buzz with their striking publicity materials; and word of mouth among booksellers was extremely positive for Angela Davis-Gardner’s enchanting novel Butterfly’s Child (not to mention how many people raved about the cover art….)

Booksellers from Florida to western North Carolina took copies of J. Logan Nicholson’s memoir Song of the Enotah – Maker of Music and were impressed with his collage of essays and poems; romantic-minded industry insiders and booksellers gobbled up copies of Crossroads at the Wilderness by Martina Vanderley; Maureen Wartski’s 2011 Next Gen Indie Book Awards Finalist Yuri’s Brush with Magic couldn’t have been displayed at a better time, what with interest in YA novels at an all-time high;

and folks were thrilled to get their hands on a copy of SIBA Finalist Nancy Simpson’s poetry collection Living Above the Frost Line. Most knew her name, but those that didn’t were utterly taken in by its enticing title….

Eighty-percent of the books from the display table were eventually handed out; the rest were donated to the non-profit organization Books for Heroes, a 501(c)(3) charity founded by George Scott of Peerless Book Store in Alpharetta, GA. Books for Heroes supplies quality books to American soldiers overseas.

Again, thanks for giving us the chance to promote your work. The quality of your books made my job easy—your books pretty much leapt off the table all weekend. Off the table, and into the hands of hundreds of avid readers.

Best regards,
Charles Fiore
Communications Coordinator
North Carolina Writers’ Network
Charles@ncwriters.org


Copyright 2011

LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE REVIEW ON AMAZON.COM

Heart of a Mountain Woman, June 3, 2011

By 

Valerie G. Nieman -

  

This review is from: Living Above the Frost Line: New and Selected Poems (Paperback)

Nancy Simpson's book of new and selected poems, out last year from Carolina Wren Press, covers a lifetime as woman and poet, from 1977 to 2009. 

Early on, Simpson takes up the image of water, water "in which memories converge." In "Water in the Highway," she writes that "Water on the pavement moves before me/Witch water, I say, as though some sorceress waits/snapping her crooked fingers." Yet this water is real, whether visible or not, and she writes of driving home, "knowing as I go/I will have to cross water to get there." Crossing water, in many traditions, is a way to shake off ghosts, and spirits too pervade these poems, from those dead in wrecks and dead in war to those who accepted death in readiness for communion with God. 

These poems sing of solitude, that lovely twin of loneliness, that has the poet declare she will "sit here until someone tells me different,/afraid everything is going to fall." In another poem, Simpson writes that "Sometimes you get what you asked for,/to be left alone," the opening to a poem that ends, "Rubble from lives in one lifetime passes before me./This is the end, the new start,/rock I remember, and clay soft beneath my feet." 

And these poems sing of family. I was particularly taken by "Sharing the Bed With Mother" in which the women make themselves narrow, and sleep on the stones of lies. "This could go on all night,/my wanting to build a bridge/and tear it down, and build it back again." 

Ultimately, however, it is about the mountains. Images of soil and rock and weather shape these poems, and they are adorned by trees and flowers and the living creatures that make up a beautiful but demanding place. Simpson echoes Whittier in "Storm," as a snow storm closes out the world and she learns that "there are things worse than being all alone in a blizzard." 

The title poem closes the book, and it is a poem of affirmation - against all odds, against war and abandonment and loss and struggle, the writer returns to the image of what will, or won't grow above the frost line. "Along the mulched path, it's clear/experts are wrong. Red nasturtiums bloom./Here in my garden/knockout roses still bloom their hearts out."

Buy a copy of LIVING ABOVE THE FROST LINE from http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Living+Above+the+Frost+Line&x=0&y=0or from 

Carolina Wren Press http://carolinawrenpress.org/books-and-merchandise/poetry/living-above-the-frost-line