Present: Brandan Roberts, Michaela Butler, Jennifer Weigel, Jason Willard, Dahlia Thomas, Kathleen Locke
Absent: n/a
Others Present: n/a
Prior Meeting’s Minutes: Corrected duplicate entry.
Old Business
Update: Roberts has completed the plagiarism checks that were voted on and found nothing published on our side (though, because of pen names, several needed to be verified), nor any of our works stolen. There were several submissions by known plagiarists on Submittable, so they were auto-rejected, and the platform was notified that they are using new email addresses.
Update: CJ the Tall Poet was offered the position of officer, and he accepted.
Update: We signed Nat 1 up for the Amazon Associates Program, which gives the company the ability to monetize purchases that people make in the US marketplace when they use the links we provide. In the last couple of weeks, it generated roughly $30—but while it’s not much, it’s passive and doesn’t require any extra work on our end, so Roberts considers it to be a good membership for us.
Update: Roberts made a Nat 1 Publishing account on SeaTable so the board can all be on the same page regarding contracts, WIP anthologies, the directory, etc. Everybody has accepted their invites for the platform. A Microsoft Family account was also made for those of us who use it, but that’s still a work in progress to get everybody situated.
New Business
Motion by Roberts: Due to discussions in the Discord Community, there appears to be a desire for a new writing challenge to occur in January. Roberts made the motion to have a January writing event; all present voted to accept the motion. After discussion involving everybody in the board, it was concluded that the event be named the Winter Court Writing Challenge and will consist of four prompts, one released per week, that must include three components to qualify to receive a free physical sticker and a “ticket” to win a small prize package consisting of several books and a teeshirt.
Reminder: February is the annual meeting, which will be open to the public. It’s during this meeting where we vote for board positions, elevate any non-voting board members to full board members (nobody is eligible at this time), promote officers to non-voting board members (again, none are eligible at this time), and allow the public to request to become officers. In addition, the public can ask questions, make suggestions, and submit proposals. While all of this happens in an open thread, any voting required will be done in the private thread, so it won’t be publicly known who votes positively or negatively on appointments. If any board members have any topics to be added to the agenda, let Roberts know by the end of January.
Meeting Adjourned: The next Board meeting is scheduled for the week of February 1-7, 2026.
Minutes Submitted by Brandan Roberts, 2/1/2026.