Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 20, 1992 TAG: 9202190206
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
WOMEN'S WRITERS GROUP CHARTERED
A branch of the National League of American Pen Women has been chartered in Roanoke.The league promotes the creative development of professional women artists, writers, dramatists, lecturers and composers. It sponsors workshops, discussion groups and lectures and has art shows and poetry and writing contests for its members.
The organization was founded in 1897 in Washington by writer Marian Longfellow O'Donohue (niece of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) and journalists Margaret Sullivan Burke and Anna Sanborne Hamilton.
There are more than 6,000 members in some 220 branches nationally. The Roanoke branch, which received its charter Saturday from national president Frances Mulliken of Independence, Mo., is the sixth in Virginia.
Others are in Lynchburg, Richmond, Alexandria, Chesapeake and the Valley of Virginia.
Juanita Carmack Howison is president of the Roanoke branch of The National League of American Pen Women. She is immediate past national president and earlier served both as state president and president of the Alexandria branch.
Howison moved to Roanoke last June.
Other officers of the Roanoke branch are Laddie Fisher, first vice president; Belva Hicks, second vice president; Nell Thompson, treasurer; and Mary Jo Shannon, recording secretary.
Membership in the league is open to qualified architects, cartoonists, craftswomen, choreographers, designers, illustrators, painters, photographers and photo-journalists, sculptors, advertising women, authors and writers, lecturers, librettists, journalists, poets, researchers, musicologists and composers.
To inquire about membership in the Roanoke branch of the National League of American Pen Women, call 774-7399.