FLYCATCHER 1: CONTRIBUTORS
Elizabeth Ashe received an MFA in Creative Writing from Chatham University. She is an MFA candidate at the Maryland Institute College of Art. When not writing poetry, Ashe is a travelholic visual artist. She is Director of Mavi Contemporary Art. Ashe was an Assistant Editor for Fourth River and continues editorial freelance. Her work has been published by 4Culture, Insert Content, Fourth River, Glass: A Literary Journal, No Teeth, Dot Dot Dash, Maintenat 5, The Legendar, and Battered Suitcase, among others, and is forthcoming in Love Notes by Vagabondage Press.
Raymond L. Atkins resides in Rome, Georgia, where he is an adjunct instructor of English at Georgia Highlands College and at Georgia Northwestern Technical College. His short stories have been published in Christmas Stories from Georgia, Christmas through a Child’s Eyes, The Blood and Fire Review, The Old Red Kimono, Long Island Woman, and Savannah Magazine. His columns have appeared in numerous publications, including The Rome News-Tribune, Memphis Downtowner Magazine, and Like the Dew. His first novel—The Front Porch Prophet—was released by Medallion Press in July of 2008 and went on to win the 2009 Georgia Author of the Year Award for First Novel as well as the Independent Publishers Book Award for Best Regional Fiction. His second novel—Sorrow Wood—was released by Medallion Press in June of 2009 to critical acclaim. His third novel, Camp Redemption, will be released by Mercer University Press in spring of 2013. He is currently drafting his fourth novel, Sweetwater Blues.
Daniel Beauregard is a Toronto-born writer currently residing in Atlanta. He works as a reporter for a local newspaper during the day and writes poetry on his lunch breaks. His work has appeared in various publications including Underground Literary Journal, Riverbabble, Hobo Camp Review, and Loose Change Literary Magazine. He likes to spend his weekends away from people at a small cabin next to a dried-up pond in Dawsonville, Georgia.
Brian Brown is a historian and documentary photographer who lives near the Altamaha River in Long County, Georgia. His recent clients include W. W. Norton, The Ottawa Citizen, The University of Georgia, Dancing Moon Press, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and The Tulane Review, among others. His websites, Vanishing South Georgia and Vanishing Coastal Georgia, catalog endangered vernacular architecture, folkways, and landscapes throughout southern Georgia. He is currently at work with photographer Mike McCall on the Altamaha Project, which, in the tradition of Jack Leigh's The Ogeechee: A River and Its People, will focus on both the natural and human aspects of life along Georgia's greatest river.
Bobbi Buchanan is the founding editor of New Southerner, an e-zine that focuses on self-sufficiency, environmental stewardship, and local economies. “Homesick,” her essay published here, is part of her collection, Belmont: A Memoir and Meditation on Place. Her essay “In the Woods” won the 2010 Still: The Journal literary contest. A Kentucky Foundation for Women grant recipient, Bobbi has been published in The New York Times, The Louisville Review, The Courier-Journal, Literary Mama, New Madrid, GreenPrints, and other publications. She teaches writing at Jefferson Community and Technical College in Shepherdsville, Kentucky.
Susan Cerulean is the author of Tracking Desire: A Journey After Swallow-tailed Kites, and the editor of four anthologies of Florida-based writings. She is at work on a book about changes coming to north Florida's barrier island coast entitled Coming to Pass. To read more about her and her work, go to www.susancerulean.com.
Casey Clabough is the author of the travel memoir, The Warrior's Path: Reflections Along an Ancient Route, as well as four scholarly books about contemporary writers. He serves as editor of the literature section of Encyclopedia Virginia and as general editor of the James Dickey Review. His first novel, Confederado, will appear in 2012, as will his fifth scholarly book, Inhabiting Contemporary Southern & Appalachian Literature: Region & Place in the 21st Century.
Daniel Corrie’s poems about time and the natural world have appeared in The American Scholar, Hudson Review, New Criterion, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications. He received the 2011 Morton Marr Poetry Prize for formal poetry from The Southwest Review. He and his wife have settled on her south Georgia family farm where they have been working to expand areas that will be supportive for wildlife. Long concerned about global warming, the Corries, along with two friends, established and have participated in a group to oppose a coal-fired electrical plant proposed for south Georgia. To learn more and consider helping support this opposition, visit www.WiregrassEnergyNetwork.com and/or join the Facebook page titled “NO COAL PLANT IN BEN HILL COUNTY!”
Hope Coulter is the author of two published novels. Her stories and poems have been published in a variety of literary magazines, including Spoon River Poetry Review, New Delta Review, Slant, and Rattle. Her honors include a Pushcart nomination (2008), Arkansas’s Porter Fund Prize for Literary Excellence, and the Short Story Award of Louisiana Life Magazine. A native of Louisiana, she received her A.B. from Harvard University and her M.F.A. in creative writing from Queens University. She teaches creative writing at Hendrix College. Of her poem published here, Hope writes, “‘The Butterfly Lesson’ is based on an experience involving my cousin, who is known as the Bug Lady of New Orleans. The poem went through many drafts as I tried to capture the basic facts of the situation as well as the lightness of the butterflies’ release and lingering. Ironically, as Yeats said, it sometimes takes a long time to achieve the economy and naturalness that make the poem ‘seem a moment’s thought.’” To see more of Hope’s work, go to www.hopecoulter.com.
Thomas Rain Crowe is an internationally published poet and the author of thirty books of original and translated works. He was a founding editor of Katuah Journal: A Bioregional Journal of the Southern Appalachians, which Gary Snyder called the best bioregional publication in the U.S., and is founder-publisher of New Native Press. His multi-award winning memoir, Zoro's Field: My Life in the Appalachian Woods, written in the style of Thoreau's Walden and based on four years of self-sufficient living in a wilderness environment in the woods of western North Carolina from 1979 to 1982 was published by the University of Georgia Press in the spring of 2005. He currently resides along the Tuckaseigee River in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. His articles, reviews, and interviews have appeared in many prominent publications across this country and abroad. He has been a feature writer for such regional publications as Green Line, Wild Mountain Times, and the Mountain Xpress. He currently writes features and columns on culture, community, and the environment for the Smoky Mountain News. As a regional and community activist since 1979, he has been involved with such issues and organizations as The Canary Coalition (Clean Air), AMUSE (Artists and Musicians United for a Safe Environment), Project to Protect Native American Sacred Sites in the S. Appalachians, UNOT (United Neighbors of Tuckasegee), and has been on the board of the Southern Biodiversity Project and the Environmental Leadership Council for WNC. His most recent book of essays and articles entitled The End of Eden: Writings of an Environmental Activist was published in 2008 by Wind Publications. His work appeared in a series chapbook focusing on the Great Smoky Mountains published by Voices From the American Land in the fall of 2011. He is a founding member of the Southern Nature Writers Group based in Athens, Georgia. His literary archives have been purchased by and are collected at the Duke University Special Collections Library in Durham, North Carolina.
Laura Dabundo is a tenured professor of English and Coordinator of Religious Studies at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, where she is in her twenty-fifth year. She teaches undergraduate courses in British Romanticism, Jane Austen, the Bible as Literature, and detective fiction. Her scholarship matches her teaching; she has edited two books on Romanticism and Romantic women novelists (The Encyclopedia of Romanticism and Jane Austen and Mary Shelley and Their Sisters), and this spring Mercer University Press will publish her monograph, The Marriage of Faith: The Christianity Of Jane Austen and William Wordsworth. She has had poetry and short fiction published, including a contribution to Christmas Stories from Georgia (University of Mississippi Press). Last spring she took a group of students on a study abroad trip to Ireland; this May she is leading a trip to England. Her education was all in Pennsylvania: PhD from Temple University, MA from Bryn Mawr College, and BA, Phi Beta Kappa, and summa cum laude with Honors in English from Bucknell University.
Jenn Gutiérrez, born in southwest Colorado and raised on the Wisconsin peninsula, grew up in a family with two distinct cultural identities. She studied at Colorado State University-Pueblo and earned her MFA from Southampton College, LIU. Gutiérrez’s first book, Weightless, was published in 2005. Her second collection, Silence Imbibed, has just been released from Anaphora Literary Press (2011). Previous work has appeared in journals such as The Texas Review, The Writer’s Journal, The Acentos Review, Antique Children, Underground Voices, Bacopa Literary Review, and Verdad Magazine. She currently teaches composition at Pikes Peak Community College in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and is working on a doctoral degree in Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Denver.
Matthew Haughton is the author of the chapbook, Bee-coursing Box (Accents Publishing). His poetry has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and appeared in many journals including Appalachian Journal, Now & Then, Still, New Southerner, The James Dickey Review, and The Louisville Review. Haughton lives in Lexington, Kentucky.
Holly Haworth is a Tennessee native who writes about the environment, with a specific focus on mountaintop removal coal mining and coal combustion waste (otherwise known as coal ash). She is a current Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism and has a piece forthcoming in Parabola called "In Search of Darkness." She enjoys learning traditional bluegrass tunes and trying to play clawhammer banjo.
Lisa Hodgens lives in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains near the Soque River and is Professor of English at Piedmont College. In addition to her teaching, she is working on the next poems in the Riverstone series and an article whose working title is “The Consolations of Nature: Lillian Smith on Screamer Mountain.”
Karen Paul Holmes loves her city girl life in Atlanta but yearns for the Blue Ridge Mountains. A former VP-Communications at a big deal company, Karen now leads a kinder, gentler life as a freelance writer and poet. She finds joy participating in poetry readings and supporting poetry through a critique group she started in Atlanta and the Writers’ Night Out she founded/hosts in Hiawassee, GA. Publishing credits include journals such as Poetry East, Atlanta Review, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Avocet (upcoming), Your Daily Poem, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and anthologies such as the upcoming American Society: What Poets See by FutureCycle Press, and Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol 5: Georgia by Texas Review Press. You can find her on Facebook at Karen Paul Holmes Poetry.
Beverly Melinda James was born in Tela, Honduras, and grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, New York. In 1989, she earned a degree in print journalism from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and spent the next twenty years as a daily newspaper reporter, magazine editor, and media relations professional. Currently she is assistant director for media relations at Georgia Perimeter College. Beverly earned a Master’s of Arts in Professional Writing from Kennesaw State University in May 2010. Beverly writes multicultural fiction for young adults and lives in Atlanta with her teenage daughter.
David King is Associate Professor of English and Film Studies at Kennesaw State University, where he also teaches in the Religious Studies program and graduate American Studies program. He is also an adjunct faculty member in the Graduate Department of Theology at Spring Hill College. His poetry has appeared in numerous little magazines and has won awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Poetry Society of America, Snake Nation Review, and Concepts. He teaches, publishes, and presents scholarly work on Flannery O'Connor and Thomas Merton, and is contributing literature and film columnist for The Georgia Bulletin, the newspaper of the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta. He is a fourth generation Atlanta native, and lives in Marietta, Georgia, with his wife and two young sons.
John Lane teaches English and environmental studies at Wofford College where he also directs the Goodall Center for Environmental Studies. His Abandoned Quarry: New & Selected Poems was published by Mercer University Press in 2011. His latest prose book, My Paddle to the Sea, was published in 2011 by the University of Georgia Press. Other recent prose books include The Best of the Kudzu Telegraph (Hub City Press, 2008) and Circling Home (University of Georgia Press, 2007).
J. Drew Lanham is a creature of the fragmented, Southern piedmont, growing up in Edgefield, South Carolina, and living currently in the shadow of the Blue Ridge near Seneca. A Professor at Clemson University, he teaches and conducts research in wildlife management, land and conservation ethics, and field ornithology. A lifelong naturalist, birder, and hunter, he engages lay and peer audiences alike on issues of natural resources conservation, blending science, art, and advocacy to motivate others to think deeply about nature and to conserve the flora and fauna of his Southern home place. He is a co-host of the Your Day birding and natural history show on SC ETV Radio and an occasional contributor to the Emmy-winning PBS television show, Expeditions with Patrick MacMillan. Drew has contributed to several anthologies including works on home and land ethics in American Crisis, Southern Solutions: From Where We Stand, Promise and Peril; a unique reflection on one of the great naturalists of the Southeast in Bartram's Living Legacy: The Travels and Nature of the South (D. Dallmeyer, ed.; Mercer University Press 2010), and an introspective on deer hunting in Outdoors Adventures in the Upcountry (M. Stone, ed.; Hub City Books 2010). In the critically acclaimed work, The Colors of Nature (A. H. Deming and L. Savoy, eds.; Milkweed Editions 2011), he addresses personal struggles in dealing with race, self-identity, and eco-love in travels to South Africa. He is published in literary magazines and professional journals alike including Orion, Wilderness Magazine, The Wildlife Professional, Forest Landowner Magazine, and Palmetto Wild. Drew’s first solo work, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (Milkweed Editions, 2013), is an exposition on growing up as a “colored” nature-lover in the South. An aspiring poet, his piece here on “birding while black” is his first published poem. He is a member of ASLE (The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment) and the Outdoor Writers Association of America. An alumnus of writing workshops including Wildbranch (Craftsbury Common, Vermont), The Environmental Writing Workshop (Missoula, Montana) and Goldenrod (Missoula, Montana), he has also taught at the inaugural Imagination in the Ruins workshop (Spartanburg, South Carolina) with fellow Southern nature writers John Lane and Janisse Ray. Drew is a member of the Whole Thinking Community at Knoll Farm (Fayston, VT) and an inaugural Audubon Society/Toyota Together Green Fellow. He serves on several conservation boards including the South Carolina Wildlife Federation, South Carolina Audubon Society and Upstate Forever. Named a Perennial by the Perennials Project, Drew’s professional passions and personal missions are converging to define sustainability and conservation in new ways, with ethnicity and race as major considerations in how we perceive and connect to nature.
Denton Loving lives on a farm near the historic Cumberland Gap where Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia come together. He works at Lincoln Memorial University where he co-directs the annual Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. His story, “Authentically Weathered Lumber,” received the 2007 Gurney Norman Prize for Short Fiction through the journal Kudzu. He received first place in the 2011 Tennessee Mountain Writers Poetry Prize. Other fiction, poetry, and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Minnetonka Review, Trajectory, Main Street Rag, and in numerous anthologies including Degrees of Elevation: Stories of Contemporary Appalachia.
Sharanya Manivannan was born in India in 1985. She is the author of a book of poems, Witchcraft (2008), and is currently working on a novel, a book of short stories, and two manuscripts of poems. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in Drunken Boat, The Nervous Breakdown, Monkeybicycle, Killing The Buddha, Dark Sky Magazine, Superstition Review, Pratilipi, and elsewhere. She can be found online at www.sharanyamanivannan.com.
Linda Parsons Marion is an editor at the University of Tennessee and the author of three poetry collections, most recently, Bound. She served as poetry editor of Now & Then magazine for many years and has received literary fellowships from the Tennessee Arts Commission, among other awards. Marion’s work has appeared in journals such as The Georgia Review, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, Asheville Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Potomac Review, Poet Lore, and Connecticut Review, and in numerous anthologies, including Listen Here: Women Writing in Appalachia, Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women’s Poetry, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia. She was recently inducted in the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame and lives in Knoxville with her husband, poet Jeff Daniel Marion.
Jennifer Martin is Flycatcher's visual arts editor.
Sarah McFalls is a native Tennessean, living and working in Knoxville. When she's not working as the collections manager for the Ewing Gallery at the University of Tennessee, she's making art. Her work has been previously published in Ruminate and has been featured in exhibitions in Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.
Linda Grant Niemann is a Professor of English at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, where she teaches creative nonfiction and American Studies. She has a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of California at Berkeley, and is the author of three books: Boomer: Railroad Memoirs (2011 Indiana University Press, 1990 University of California Press), Railroad Voices (1998 Stanford University Press), and Railroad Noir (2010 Indiana University Press). These nonfiction works chronicle her twenty-year career as a railroad freight conductor. Her current project is a book on traveling in Mexico called Learning Spanish.
Peter Peteet, poet, thing finder, and activist, is published for the first time here. He is the senior partner of Pete's Import Garage, an active member of the Citizen Climate Lobby, and the finder of the Peteet canoe now on display at the Oconee Heritage Center in Walhalla, South Carolina. He holds a BVA from Georgia State University in Painting. He attempts to live a simple and sustainable life amid the complex and chaotic urban sprawl of his hometown, Atlanta, with his wife, Ana Vizurraga, and two sons.
Janisse Ray, writer, naturalist, and activist, is the author of four books of literary nonfiction and a collection of nature poetry. She is on the faculty of Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program and is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana, and in 2007 was awarded an honorary doctorate from Unity College in Maine. Her book on sustainable agriculture, The Seed Underground: A Revolution to Save Food, is due out from Chelsea Green Publishing in June of 2012. Ray attempts to live a simple, sustainable life on a farm in southern Georgia with her husband, Raven Waters.
Erik Reece is the author of An American Gospel: On Family, Religion and the Kingdom of God and Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness, which won Columbia University's John B. Oakes Award for Distinguished Environmental Writing and the Sierra Club's David R. Brower Award. His recent collection of poetry is A Short History of the Present, available from Larkspur Press. He teaches writing at the University of Kentucky. He is a contributing editor at Orion Magazine; some of his essays for Orion include “Hell Yeah, We Want Windmills," “The Schools We Need,” and “Notes from a Very Small Island.” He recently wrote about birding with Wendell Berry in Garden & Gun Magazine.
Brenda Rose grew up barefoot and poor, working in the tobacco fields of southern Georgia. After spending much of her adult life in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, she followed her heart back to the South, married the love of her life, pulled off her tired shoes, and stepped back into the dirt of her homeland. She works as a freelance grant writer, a visual artist painting in oils, and a ghostwriter for several businesses. She recently turned to writing fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Her writings have been accepted for publication in upcoming issues of Ginosko Literary Journal and Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Brenda writes a blog, “Sweet Tea in Southern Georgia” at www.brendasuttonrose.com. She’s currently working on a collection of short stories.
Rosemary Royston’s chapbook Splitting the Soil will be published in late 2011/early 2012 by Redneck Press. She holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University and is a lecturer at Young Harris College. Rosemary’s poetry has been published in journals such as The Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, Coal Hill Review, FutureCycle, and Alehouse. Her essays on writing poetry are included in Women and Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets. She was the recipient of the 2010 Literal Latte Food Verse Award. She currently serves as the Program Coordinator for the North Carolina Writers Network-West. To read more of her work, go to http://theluxuryoftrees.wordpress.com.
Joshua Smith is a poet, baker of bread, amateur potter, and lifelong pilgrim. He graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, with a BA in English, and his work has appeared in The Cave Region Review, Journey, Big Muddy, and Quiddity. Joshua currently lives with his wife Alyssa in Liberty, Missouri, and is completing master's-level coursework for a degree in Divinity from Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Shawnee, Kansas. Though he has very little use for the institutional Church, Joshua is driven by an innate spiritual curiosity and personally identifies closely with the Quaker movement. An avid fan of the works of Wendell Berry, Henry David Thoreau, and Gandhi, Joshua hopes to someday live a humble life on a small parcel of land with a tiny house and a big garden. He loves good food and good conversation and is always open to meeting and dialoguing with new people. He occasionally posts his thoughts at everyday-revolutionary.blogspot.com.
Donna Steiner’s writing has been published in literary journals including Fourth Genre, Shenandoah, The Bellingham Review, The Sun, and The Los Angeles Review. She’s a contributing writer for Hippocampus Magazine, teaches at the State University of New York in Oswego, and was named a 2011 fellow in Nonfiction Literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She’s currently putting finishing touches on a collection of linked, place-based essays and daydreaming about new projects. Here are a few links to her work: a short story, an essay, and an article.
Lana Stowers is a Roswell, Georgia based emerging professional photographer who specializes in fine art and portrait photography. Her artwork "Toes and Fingers" is the cover of the novel La Stanza Di Mio Fratello by Anne Icart, which was published in fall of 2010 by Corbaccio Publishing Company in Italy. Another fine art photograph was used as the cover of the album This Town by The Amber Herd, released in spring of 2011. Lana writes, “I'm lucky to be able to trace memories (bright or dark, happy or sad) of the most amazing thing there is—life. Come visit my fine art gallery that is currently on my Facebook page at Lana Stowers Photography; I would love to share those memories with you!”
Barbara Brown Taylor is the Butman Professor of Religion at Piedmont College in rural northeast Georgia. An Episcopal priest since 1984, she is the author of twelve books, including the New York Times bestseller An Altar in the World, published by HarperOne in February 2009. Her first memoir, Leaving Church, met with widespread critical acclaim, winning a 2006 Author of the Year award from the Georgia Writers Association. Taylor and her husband Ed live on a working farm in the foothills of the Appalachians with wild turkeys, red foxes, two old Quarter horses, and too many chickens.
Trileigh Tucker is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Seattle University. Her current interdisciplinary teaching and research interests include natural history education, ecopsychology, and contemplative practice and the natural world. She is a past Steering Committee member for the Puget Sound-area Curriculum for the Bioregion. When not spending time with her partner and her five cats, she's most likely to be found photographing birds and other wildlife near her home in West Seattle, working on watercolors, or writing her blog, Natural Presence. Of particular interest to her these days are the ways in which environmental despair can be addressed through direct contact with nature.
Marianne Worthington is co-founder and poetry editor of Still: The Journal and poetry editor for Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine. She is editor of the Motif anthology series from Motes Books (Louisville) and the 2008 recipient of the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. She was recently awarded the James Baker Hall Memorial Prize in Poetry, sponsored by New Southerner. Her poetry chapbook is Larger Bodies Than Mine (Finishing Line Press, 2006). She lives in Williamsburg, Kentucky.
Sheri L. Wright’s visual work can be seen in numerous journals, including Blood Orange Review, The Single Hound, THIS Literary Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Blood Lotus, and Subliminal Interiors. She is currently working on a collection that unites her photography with her poetry. She feels that the two can play nicely together without too much sibling rivalry. For more info on her work, please visit her website at www.scribblingsandsuch.com
Rebecca Vidra’s roots are slowly establishing themselves in the hard red clay of her North Carolina piedmont home. While she weaves together science and environmental ethics in her teaching at Duke University, she also is curious about how to bring them together in her writing. She is currently working on a series of essays about the ethics of ecological restoration.
Sally Zaino is Executive Director of a small land trust in Pennsylvania, which has a dual mission of land preservation and environmental education. She writes essays, blogs, and poetry, and owns a small editing business. She is the founder and co-editor of the online and print poetry journal, Earthshine. Her own poetry has appeared in Cider Press Review, Avocet, and Snowy Egret.