writinggroup.kristykelly.com
There is a chair for your story.
Writer's Group led by Kristy Kelly is a monthly table for writers in and around Kinston: people with poems, family stories, grant ideas, novels, essays, local history, news instincts, questions, and unfinished pages that deserve company.
A note from Kristy
Bring the page you have.
You do not have to arrive with a finished chapter, a polished poem, or a perfect idea. Bring one page, one paragraph, one memory, one question, or only the wish to begin. This group is for writers in and around Kinston who want encouragement, practical tools, honest conversation, and a regular reason to keep returning to the page.
Rooted Here
Eastern North Carolina is not background. It is material.
The group makes room for the stories people carry from family, work, faith, farms, storms, classrooms, churches, neighborhoods, businesses, public life, and the roads between small towns.
Before the Meeting
Bring one thing into the room.
You can arrive with a finished page, a rough paragraph, a memory, a character, a question, or a weekly prompt response. The point is not perfection. The point is having something real to begin with.
Start Here
Take one small step toward the table.
Come to a meeting
See what to bring, how sharing works, and what kind of feedback the room is built for.
OpenRegister for the group
Tell Kristy what you write, what you are hoping for, and what would make the first meeting easier.
OpenAnswer a weekly prompt
Choose one small invitation and write your way into a page before Monday disappears.
OpenShare a page
Send a poem, scene, essay, memory, question, or excerpt with the kind of response you need.
OpenRead member writing
Visit the public shelf for approved pieces and the writer pages behind them.
OpenPractice between meetings
Use short drills for scene, purpose, revision, style, nonfiction, and reading like a writer.
OpenKeep Going
Return when you need a prompt, a resource, or a next step.
Find Your Shape
Your writing can be literary, practical, public, private, local, or still becoming.
A journalism and news style guide focused on clarity, consistency, brevity, punctuation, capitalization, numbers, titles, dates, and public-facing reporting conventions.
Use for news releases, newspaper stories, captions, community announcements, and public information writing.
Read moreChicago StyleA publishing and book style guide often used for nonfiction books, fiction manuscripts, footnotes, endnotes, bibliographies, and long-form editorial consistency.
Use for books, essays, history, memoir, literary work, and projects with notes or bibliographies.
Read moreMLA StyleAn academic style used heavily in literature, humanities, close reading, quotations, works cited pages, and classroom writing.
Use for literary analysis, humanities essays, research papers, and writing about texts.
Read moreAPA StyleAn academic style used in social sciences with emphasis on dates, sources, research clarity, citations, and reference lists.
Use for psychology, education, social science, research summaries, and evidence-based articles.
Read moreLiterary Fiction genreFiction where the primary pleasure often comes from character, consciousness, language, moral pressure, and how a life is understood.
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Read moreMystery and Detective Fiction genreWriting organized around a question, a hidden truth, clues, suspects, misdirection, and the pleasure of discovery.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Read moreHorror and Gothic genreWriting that creates dread through atmosphere, vulnerability, transgression, haunting, the monstrous, or the uncanny.
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Read moreScience Fiction genreSpeculative writing that asks what changes when science, technology, time, biology, society, or knowledge changes.
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
Read moreAt the Table
Good feedback needs shared language and specific questions.
Craft Terms
Character: A person on the page with desire, pressure, contradiction, and choice.
Scene: A unit of present action where something changes.
Voice: The sound of a mind meeting the material.
Subtext: Meaning carried underneath what is said directly.
This Week's Prompts
- Write about a doorway you have crossed more than once, and what changed each time.
- Begin with the sentence: I thought I knew this road.
- Describe a family object without naming it until the final line.
- Write a scene where someone brings food instead of apologizing.
- Make a list of ten sounds from a place you know, then turn three into a poem.
Writer Exchange
Share a goal, ask for readers, offer encouragement, and bring a specific question to the table.
Go to workshop