By Carroll S. Taylor
Guest Writer
William Johnson Everett
Author, poet and woodworker William Johnson Everett will be the featured guest for Writers’ Night Out on Zoom at 7 p.m. Friday, July 9. This monthly event, sponsored by the North Carolina Writers’ Network-West, is being held online because of COVID. We hope to meet again in person this fall. However, we are happy that not only local writers but those from other states and distant cities are joining us each month on Zoom.
With a Yale Divinity School BD and a Harvard PhD, Everett taught ethics in theological seminaries and graduate schools for more than 30 years. During that time, he published seven books and many articles in English and German on ethical issues in religion and society. His teaching took him to Milwaukee, Atlanta and Boston as well as Germany, India and South Africa. In 2001 he turned to literary fiction, poetry, and woodworking.
This fall, Everett’s expository memoir "Making My Way in Ethics, Worship, and Wood" is forthcoming. He frames the book around the cultural contexts that have shaped his life. In "Red Clay, Blood River", Everett put his inter-continental experience into a wide-ranging historical novel about connections between "America’s Trail of Tears” and "South Africa’s Great Trek.” The book is written from an ecological standpoint, in which Earth is the narrator.
Everett’s poetry collection is "Turnings: Poems of Transformation". Both his ethics and his poetry explore the ways we give shape and meaning to our thoughts, feelings, and actions within the mysterious powers of creativity and love that undergird our existence. He also co-authored with his friend John de Gruchy, "Sawdust and Soul: A Conversation about Woodworking and Spirituality." For more of his writing, you can follow Everett's blog, www.WilliamEverett.com.
Everett also creates furniture for worship settings, focusing on round communion tables that symbolize circle dynamics of reconciliation. Visit www.WisdomsTable.net for more information and to see photos of his work and also the textiles and mosaics of his wife Sylvia, who uses these media to explore spiritual, religious, and feminist themes. He and Sylvia live in Waynesville, NC.
Everyone is invited to bring a poem or short prose piece to read at Open Mic. Time is limited to 3 to 4 minutes. Email Glenda Beall at: glendabeall@msn.com to be added to the list for open mic.
To receive a Zoom invitation link to the event, contact Beall or Karen Holmes at: kpaulholmes@gmail.com.