Berea Writers Circle, Berea, KY (2026)

The Berea Writers Circle (BereaWriters.com) meets 1:30 - 3:00 PM on the third Saturday of the month at the Berea branch of the Madison County Public Library. The BWC welcomes all types of writers--novelists, poets, journalists, freelancers, short story writers, playwrights, bloggers, and any others. Whether published, self-published, or unpublished, we all look to grow and refine our craft. As part of that process, the BWC coordinates critique groups to meet regularly and provide feedback for writers ready to share their work.

10/12/2026

We'll be flying high on Saturday since Roger Jones will be with us and will bring his new memoir, Skybound. Roger talked about his vegetarian, rotten pumpkin-eating turkey vulture at a Berea Writers Circle meeting in October two years ago. It may be fitting that Roger talk about pumpkin explosions from his recently released memoir this October. Roger is a retired professor from Berea College and a longtime member of the Berea Writers Circle. So, plan on attending our meeting on Saturday at the Madison County Public Library in Berea from 1:30 pm until 3 pm. We'll have refreshments. As usual, at 4:00 pm we will have an open mic session. Feel free to bring a short piece of writing to share with other members, and get some useful feedback. It will not be taken amiss if there is a mention or two of pumpkins. Hope to see you then.

08/11/2026

Hello Writers,
Here’s what our presenter for Saturday’s program at the Berea Writers Circle says you’ll learn Saturday, August 15, 2026 at the Madison County Public Library at Berea from 1:30 until 3. We will also have an open mic session from 3 pm until 4 pm. Hope to see you there, and yes, refreshments.

“Taking Your Time About Striking”: writing a pantoum

The pantoum is a poetic form that sparks discovery in the writer and reader. It works especially well to give new insights to "found" material, sentences and phrases from another source. In this workshop, we’ll review the pantoum’s structure of repeated and new lines, look at some examples, discuss adaptations, and even try our hand at writing one. We’ll hope to experience the pantoum’s growing power, how it’s “like a hawk with a chicken, it takes its time about striking,” in the words of the Malayan proverb invoked by poet Wendy Bishop (Thirteen Ways of Looking for a Poem, 140). Even if you don't usually write poetry, experimenting with this form can offer you some new possibilities for working with words.

07/15/2026

If you check the trends in publishing for 2026 you will find AI is a prominent trend. If you follow what’s going on in higher education, AI and its use and abuse is a frequent topic. It you follow the labor market, many recent articles debate the effect of AI on the job markets, even the future of jobs entirely. We may not cover all that territory, but since AI is the talk of the town, this month’s meeting will raise and maybe answer some questions many writers have about the use of AI. So, whether you’re versed in ChatGPT, CoPilot, or Claude, or none of the above, you will want to be at the Berea Writers Circle on Saturday, July 18th, from 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm, at the Madison County Public Library in Berea. Deanna Wilbourne, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Berea College will focus a presentation on AI, and also will tailor her presentation using some of the ideas and issues raised by members at our June meeting. We will have refreshments. Also, from 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm we will have an open mic session for any of us to come and share a short piece of writing, or just to listen. Hope to see you on Saturday.

06/18/2026

Hello Writers,
This month we will be exploring some apps, four free and one paid, that can be useful to writers. This has been increasingly important because many laptops no longer come with built-in software like word processors. Your choices in this situation are often to pay a lot for an Office Suite, like Microsoft, or to use some minimal word processor that might be included on your laptop. This is made more difficult for writers because submission rules often require you submit in MS Word, or use a .pdf format. These apps help with these issues and provide the kinds of functionality that are useful to writers. Three of the four apps we will talk about work in ways very familiar to those who have experience with MS Word and MS Excel. So, join us Saturday, June 20, 2026, at 1:30 pm at the Madison County Public Library in Berea in one of the community rooms. We will have refreshments. At 4:00 pm we will spend an hour in an open mic session, so bring a small piece of your own writing to share, if you would like.

05/12/2026

What are the trends in Writing Business English? CoPilot speaks and Berea Writers Circle responds. Business writing was one of the topics members said they would like to see covered this year. So, in May, we’ll be debating the trends in writing for business in this era of social media, texting and other forms of communication. Probably too broad a topic, but we’ll give it the old college try. We asked CoPilot to give us four trends in Business English for 2026, and it did. Louis Will and I will offer some ideas we had in response to the CoPilot offering, and then we’ll open the topic up for discussion. Business English is important for all of us, because at some point most of us are called upon to write a letter, a summary, a report, or some other document requiring this more formal mode of communication. So, join us Saturday, May 16th from 1:30 pm to 3:00 pm at the Madison County Public Library in Berea. We’ll have some refreshments. From 3:00pm to 4:00 pm we’ll have an open mic session, so bring a short piece, poem, chapter to read if you’d like. See you then.

04/14/2026

Hello Writers,
In April we will be examining the advantages offered by handwriting and typewriting, all in an era where we all live with the benefits and the disadvantages of technology. We’ll look at what handwriting offers us and what some of the new neuroscience can help us to understand about how we learn and how we create. Should be a fun session and we will have a writing exercise. Come join us on Saturday, April 18. 2026 at 1:30 pm until 3:00 pm at the Madison County Public Library at Berea in one of the community rooms. We’ll have some refreshments. And, we’ll have an open mic session for those who are interested from 3:00 pm until 4:00 pm. I hope you’ll join us.

Address

Berea, KY
40403

Website

http://bereawriters.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Berea Writers Circle posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Berea Writers Circle:

Berea Writers Circle