For the love of words and good writing.

That was at least part of the reason for starting this newspaper. Not that other papers and magazines don’t have exceptional writers, to the contrary — they do. I have my own favorites among the national and the local papers, women and men whose copy I always make a point to read. In my universe reading papers is a kind of sustenance.

Knowing the talented wordsmiths were out there, we decided to start a newspaper that spent only a small percentage of its resources on notices and events and a lot of its energy on seeking out and publishing above-average writing.

I was following my heart. A strongly worded opinion column, innovative poetry, moving lyrics or just a good turn of phrase have always been meaningful to me. A few hours with a drunken sot whose words make me laugh and think is time well spent. Leave me alone with a great book and I’m satisfied for a day, or several days if the opportunity is there.

And so we sought writers who, perhaps, were creative if nothing else. We’ve had some pretty good ones show up on the pages of this paper over the years. And we have come to one of those crossroads that every periodical faces from time to time. We’re looking for talent. Want to write about music, both local and national? How about movies? Do you know anything about art? Ever thought about writing a regular opinion column? Are there any women out there who want to write from a feminine perspective about the issues facing Western North Carolina?

I’ve had fellow newspaper folks tell me that it is almost weird to go fishing for writers via a column, kind of narcissistic, but so be it. This, however, is more than just a fishing expedition. It’s also a chance for me to brag about some of the writers who have passed through these pages.

If you write, then a book is always a dream. It may not be what you are after or what you are trying to do, but the fact remains that no matter what kind of writing one does, having a book published is the most tangible of affirmations, a darn good sign that someone believes what you’ve done is worthwhile. If one normally writes for newspapers, then having a book means you’ve traded in a very short shelf life for a place in eternity. It’s a significant passage.

This spring, two men who have been writing for The Smoky Mountain News for years have turned essays published in this paper into books. Although our part is peripheral, it nonetheless evokes a sense of pride.

Thomas Crowe, who was raised in the mountains, moved out West to San Francisco and then traveled before coming back to this region, has had his book Zoro’s Field, My Life in the Appalachian Woods (see the review on page 22) published by the University of Georgia Press.

It is the story of Crowe’s time spent living alone, off-the-grid, in a remote cabin in Polk County. It’s back-to-nature subject matter and philosophical musings struck a chord with readers of The Smoky Mountain News as we serialized the first draft of the chapters over two years. Many, many times while it was appearing in the paper I heard from those who could not wait for the next chapter, or perhaps had missed a segment and wanted to know where they could locate it in our Web site archives.

Crowe has lived the writer’s life. He has published 11 works including translations and poetry, has been an editor, reviewer, publisher and recording artist. His reputation earned him book jacket kudos from the likes of Thomas Berry and Gary Snyder. He has managed to carve out a livelihood by his abilities with words, something to which many who are bitten by the writer’s bug aspire but very few attain.

As we serialized Crowe’s book, I thought often of just how unusual that is these days. Most students of literature know that, up until the 1940s, it was very common for news magazines to serialize books, whereby they run successive chapters in consecutive issues. It was a good-paying gig for many writers who would later become famous, and before TV and radio, it was like the weekly sitcom or drama.

When Thomas approached me with the idea, he did not have a publisher for the book and was just in the process of writing it. He said the monthly deadline helped his discipline and may have played a part in helping get it published. And so now we are considering doing it again: monthly installments of a book in progress. We just need one to publish.

Also just out in the last few weeks is a book by our weekly columnist George Ellison called Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. The book is a collection of reworked essays that appeared in this paper as Ellison’s weekly Back Then column.

Ellison may be this paper’s most popular columnist. His ability to come up with interesting stories, anecdotes, excerpts from old books and Cherokee mythology provides for fascinating reading. Each week his column brings in a few emails from historians and others who eagerly await his columns.

But these two recently published authors are not alone. By my estimation we have other heavyweight contributors. Gary Carden, of course, is highly regarded as one of the few authentic Appalachian writers. His last book, Mason Jars in the Flood, was the Appalachian Writers Association’s Book of the Year in 2001. That selection put him in the rarified company of Charles Frazier, Ron Rash and Robert Morgan, whose books have won the same honor. Gary continues to write, both for this newspaper and others in the region, as well as continuing to work on plays and other manuscripts. His voice is an important one for this region.

Of course Marshall Frank, who still writes an occasional column, has at least four published novels, and there may soon be a movie from one of his novels; Michael Beadle has a book of poems and will, I suspect, make a name for himself in that genre if he sticks with it. Jeff Minick’s book reviews are simply outstanding, as are his opinion columns. Chris Cox already has one book of essays published, called Waking Up in a Cornfield: A Selection of Columns. Those writings appeared in The Mountaineer (in another life when I edited that newspaper) and in The Asheville Citizen-Times. Don Hendershot’s Naturalist Corner column is also very popular, regularly evoking outrage from those opposed to his views and kudos from the like-minded.

And then there are those who have gone away. One of the disappointments of relying on free-lance writers is that they have their own lives, and those lives often go in new directions. Talking about the good writers that go away is painful. Jay Hardwig is departing, and what a loss that will be. He is one of the most playful, colorful wordsmiths we’ve ever had. It changed the personality of our paper when Hunter Pope left us (look for his writings in Mountain Xpress), as it did when Karl Rohr moved on to Louisiana and out of our pages. Dawn Gilchrist-Young is no longer a regular, and I miss her strong mind and thoughtful prose. Way back some of you may remember Esther Godfrey, a bold writer who never missed a chance to surprise readers. Will Harlan, now editor of Blue Ridge Outdoors, contributed regular outdoors columns that were among the best writings ever to appear in this newspaper. Lew Garnett, another opinion page columnist, was perhaps the funniest.

Why spend all this space on talking about these writers? Because they are what differentiates one publication from another, what gives it staying power. In my newspaper career I’ve been fortunate to work with many talented people, but two separate publishers always reminded me that a paper’s personality was among its most important assets. Does it feel comfortable when you sit down with it? Does it reflect its region, celebrate its roots? Many of us are involved in putting this newspaper together each week, but if there is nothing worth reading, than some would say we are wasting our time.

So there it is. I’ve used up more than a column to congratulate some of our writers on their success, praise others and bemoan the loss of so many good ones. The list is lengthy, and it needs to get even longer. Any takers?

(Scott McLeod can be reached at info@smokymounainnews.com.)