Neshaminy: The Bucks County Historical and Literary Journal
“The secret of good writing is to say an old thing a new way
or to say a new thing in an old way.”
[Richard Harding Davis]
| ABOUT THE BCWW
NEW MEMBERS WITH A SERIOUS WRITING INTEREST ARE WELCOME. Since 1998, the independent, non-profit BCWW in historic Bucks County, PA, has advanced the power of the written word in fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction in a friendly, supportive atmosphere. It does not work with poetry. The BCWW's only aim is to critique members' writing with the goal of publication.
There are no dues or membership fees.
We meet twice monthly on Tuesday evenings via Zoom.
The workshop may not be right for every aspiring writer, but if interested in becoming a member contact Don Swaim sharing your background and experience.
WORKSHOP NEWS
HERE
BUCKS COUNTY'S FABULOUS
LITERARY HISTORY
HERE
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PUB DATE OCT 8, 2024
cover painting by Addie Hocynec
Issue No. 10: Coming to Amazon & local stores. Great stuff in this issue: Candid profile of literary great John Updike. Study of prolific Saturday Evening Post illustrator John Philip Falter (see related article below). Plus witches, evil spirits, superstition, and other strange happenings.
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 If the picture of the church on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post of Jan. 5, 1951, looks familiar to some, it's St. Paul's Episcopal at Oakland Avenue and Pine Street in Doylestown, PA -- although now with an extension and a parking lot and a barn in the rear. This was the Bucks County Writers Workshop's home for several years until the pandemic.
The cover was painted by artist John Philip Falter (1910-1982) who lived in Bucks County and took some artistic license by moving a couple of houses into closer proximity to the church and removing a few trees.
The Doylestown Historical Society tells us that Falter's first Saturday Evening Post cover was published on Sep. 1, 1943. He produced 128 additional covers until the magazine's format was changed to photographs. Falter also provided illustrations for many other publications including Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, McCall’s, Life Magazine, and Look. See detailed article in the fall/winter 2024 issue of Neshaminy.
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FICTION MEETS HISTORY
Neshaminy journal's panel on historical fiction at the Doylestown Historical Society on May 30. Managing editor Bill Donahue quizzes panelists LCW Allingham, Natalie Dyen, and Melissa D. Sullivan. To the left of Donahue is Daria Mickowski, the DHS's new executive director.
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BUCKS COUNTY LIBRARY AUTHOR FEST
Part of our table display, Nov. 4, 2023. Present and past Bucks County Writers Workshop members were there to tout their work, including the latest issues of the BCWW literary journal Neshaminy and the workshop's showcase anthologies, Shocking Verbs, Lawless Nouns and Covid-19: The Pandemic Project
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Neshaminy: The Bucks County Historical and Literary Journal
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The Doylestown Historical Society. . .
...co-sponsored the first lecture in the Abramson Art & Artist series: "No Destitute Scribbler, Henry C. Mercer's Adventure in Publishing" in the refurbished barn at the Doylestown Historical Society on July 26, 2023. It was standing-room only.
Professor Tom Sparrow illuminated multifaceted historian-archeologist-collector Mercer's foray into the world of fiction, his use of local landmarks including Fonthill Castle and Doyle's Tavern, and why his only collection of ghost stories November Night Tales, though hailed as comparable to Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce, ultimately fell into obscurity.
Henry C. Mercer
Raised in the Poconos, Tom Sparrow teaches philosophy at Slippery Rock University. His published work includes books and articles of academic philosophy, most recently The Alphonso Lingis Reader (University of Minnesota Press, 2018) and True Detective and Philosophy: A Deeper Kind of Darkness (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017).
The latest edition of Neshaminy featuring Sparrow's work and Mercer's ghost story "Castle Valley," illustrated by Pat Achilles can be obtained at:
Amazon
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COVID-19 -- THE PANDEMIC PROJECT
By Members of the BCWW
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, BCWW members began m,eeting via Zoom. The result is a unique story collection filled with humor, fiction, essays, poetry, and scathing satire.
Buy HERE
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BCWW IN THE NEWS
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