2012 Artists
Mary Adams
Mary Adams is a child of the snow-and-steel belt,  and she writes poetry and rescues dogs in Sylva, NC. She earned her MFA from the Iowa Writer's Workshop and received her doctorate from the University of Houston. She also teaches Shakespeare and Biblical Literature. Her books include Epistles from the Planet Photosynthesis and Commandment. Her poems have appeared in Western Humanities Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Shenandoah, North American Review, Gulf Coast, and Shenandoah, among others. Her honors include a Michener grant and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her poems and materials are available on her web site, www.maryadams.net.
Shirlette Ammons
Shirlette Ammons is a poet, writer, musician and coordinator of an arts program for children. She  is also a Cave Canem Fellow and a freelance writer whose reviews and articles have appeared in The Independent Weekly, Duke Performances’ blog The Thread, and other publications. Her second collection of poetry entitled Matching Skin was published by Carolina Wren Press in June 2008 and features an introduction by Nikky Finney, 2011 National Book Award Winner for Poetry. Shirlette’s first collection of poetry, entitled Stumphole Anthology of Bakwoods Blood (Big Drum Press) was published in September 2002. She is also vocalist songwriter for hip hop rock band, mosadi music. Her poetry and essays appear in The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (University of Georgia Press), What Your Mama Never Told You: True Stories About Love and Sex (Houghton Mifflin), The Asheville Review and other publications. Her most recent musical collaboration with The Dynamite Brothers, is called And Lovers Like is available at www.mosadimusic.com.
Darnell Arnoult
North Carolina author Darnell Arnoult is the prize-winning author of What Travels With Us: Poems  (LSU Press) and the novel Sufficient Grace (Free Press). Her shorter works have appeared in a variety of journals. Arnoult holds an MFA from University of Memphis and MA from NC State, and is a regular faculty member of the Duke Writers Workshop, Tennessee Young Writers Workshop, John C. Campbell Folk School, and Learning Events. Her work has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, Asheville Poetry Review, Nantahala Review, Now and Then, Sandhills Review, Southern Cultures, Southern Exposure, and Southwest Review. Arnoult is a recipient of the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Literature, SIBA Poetry Book of the Year, Mary Frances Hobson Medal for Arts and Letters, and in 2007 was named Tennessee Writer of the Year by the Tennessee Writers Alliance. Some of her work is available on her web site: www.darnellarnoult.com.
Joseph Bathanti
was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He has BA & MA degrees in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. Bathanti is the author of six books of poetry: Communion Partners; Anson County; The Feast of All Saints; This Metal, which was nominated for The National Book Award, and won the 1997 Oscar  Arnold Young Award from The North Carolina Poetry Council for best book of poems by a North Carolina writer; Land of Amnesia, from Press 53 in 2009; and, Restoring Sacred Art, from Star Cloud Press, winner of the 2010 Roanoke Chowan Prize, awarded annually by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association for best book of poetry in a given year. Bathanti's first novel, East Liberty, winner of the Carolina Novel Award, was published in 2001 by Banks Channel Books in Wilmington, NC. His latest novel, Coventry, winner of the 2006 Novello Literary Award, was published by Novello Festival Press in Charlotte, NC. They Changed the State: The Legacy of North Carolina’s Visiting Artists, 1971-1995, his book of nonfiction, was published in early 2007. His collection of short stories, The High Heart, winner of the 2006 Spokane Prize, was published by Eastern Washington University Press in Fall 2007. He is the recipient of many awards, including Literature Fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council in 1994 (for poetry) and 2009 (for fiction); The Samuel Talmadge Ragan Award, presented annually for outstanding contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina over an extended period; a Fellowship from The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry; and many others.
Stefan Merrill Block
 Born in 1982, Stefan Merrill Block grew up in Plano, Texas. His first book, The Story of Forgetting, was an international bestseller and the winner of Best First Fiction at the Rome International Festival of Literature, the 2008 Merck Serono Literature Prize and the 2009 Fiction Award from The Writers' League of Texas. The Story of Forgetting was also a finalist for the debut fiction awards from IndieBound, Salon du Livre and The Center for Fiction. Following the publication of his second novel, The Storm at the Door, Stefan was awarded The University of Texas Dobie-Paisano Fellowship and a fellowship at The Santa Maddalena Foundation in Italy. Stefan lives in Brooklyn. His web site is www.stefanmerrillblock.com.
Catherine Carter
Born on the eastern shore of Maryland and raised there by wolves and vultures, CatherineCarter now lives in Cullowhee with her husband near Western Carolina University, where sheteaches in and coordinates the English education program. Her first full-length collection, The Memory of Gills (LSU, 2006) received the 2007 Roanoke-Chowan Award from the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association; her poem “Toast” won the 2009 North Carolina Writer’s Network Randall Jarrell award. Her work has also appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Orion, and Best American Poetry 2009, among others; her new book (LSU, 2012) is The Swamp Monster at Home.
Deidre Elliott
Raised in the Great Plains, Deidre Elliott lived in the Rocky Mountains, the Sonoran Desert, and  urban Guadalajara, Mexico, before moving to Western North Carolina. Her creative nonfiction appears in numerous journals as well as in the anthologies, Getting Over the Color Green: Contemporary Environmental Literature of the Southwest (University of Arizona Press, 2001) and Hell's Half-Mile: River Runners' Tales of Hilarity and Misadventure (Breakaway Books, 2004). Her fiction appears in the anthology Cold Flashes: Literary Snapshots of Alaska (University of Alaska Press, 2010). She has recently completed a collection of essays, Dry Eden: A Desert Commonplace Book. Currently, she coordinates the Professional Writing Program and teaches in the English Department at Western Carolina University.
Nick Flynn
Nick Flynn’s most recent book is The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands (2011), a collection of  poems that are linked to his latest memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb (2010), which the Los Angeles Times calls a “disquieting masterpiece.” His previous memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (2004), won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, was shortlisted for France’s Prix Femina, and has been translated into fourteen languages. He is also the author of a play, Alice Invents a Little Game and Alice Always Wins (2008), as well as two other books of poetry, Some Ether (2000), and Blind Huber (2002), for which he received fellowships from, among other organizations, The Guggenheim Foundation and The Library of Congress. Some of the venues his poems, essays and non-fiction have appeared in include The New Yorker, the Paris Review, National Public Radio’s This American Life, and The New York Times Book Review. His film credits include artistic collaborator and “field poet” on the film Darwin’s Nightmare (nominated for an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006), as well as executive producer and artistic collaborator on Being Flynn, the film version of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City (due out in 2012 from Focus Features, directed by Paul Weitz, starring Robert De Niro, Paul Dano, and Julianne Moore). A professor in the creative writing program at the University of Houston, where he teaches each spring, he then spends the rest of the year in (or near) Brooklyn.
Rebecca-Hardin-Thrift
Rebecca Hardin-Thrift is originally from Belm ont, North Carolina. The child of teenage divorcee Debra Beatty and full time hippie, David Hardin, she enjoyed a childhood full of squalor and bacon grease. She holds a Bachelor's degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and a Master of Fine Arts in fiction from the University of Massachusetts. In 2002 she wrote and performed her one woman show, "The Becky Show," in Northampton, Massachusetts and at the New York International Fringe Festival. The show is a multimedia exploration of the aforementioned white trash childhood, chronicling the hard life and hard times of a southern family. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in Washington Square, The Bellevue Literary Review, Karamu, and others. Rebecca is an Associate Professor of English at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi where she teaches creative writing and drama, and directs a play each year. She is the editor of Tougaloo College’s literary journal, Between Two Rivers, the co-editor of the online journal, 27 rue de fleures and serves on the board of directors for Binge Press.
Jon Pineda
 Jon Pineda is the author of the memoir Sleep in Me, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection and a Library Journal "Best Books of 2010" Selection. He is the author of the poetry collections The Translator's Diary, winner of the 2007 Green Rose Prize, and Birthmark, selected by Ralph Burns as winner of the 2003 Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry Open Competition. His recent poetry manuscript was a finalist for the 2011 National Poetry Series, and his debut novel is forthcoming in 2013 from Milkweed Editions. He teaches in the low-residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte.
Ron Rash
Ron Rash (born 1953), an American poet, short story writer and novelist, is the Parris Distinguished Professor in Appalachian Cultural Studies at Western Carolina University. Rash was born in Chester, South Carolina, in 1953, grew up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, and is a graduate of Gardner-Webb University and Clemson University. In 1994 he published his first book, a collection of short stories titled The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth. Since then, Rash has published three collections of poetry, three short story collections, and four novels, all to wide critical acclaim and several awards and honors. Rash's poems and stories have appeared in more than 100 magazines and journals over the years. With each new book, Rash has confirmed his position as a central and significant Appalachian writer alongside well-established names like Fred Chappell, Lee Smith, and Robert Morgan. Serena, Rash's latest release, has received favorable reviews nationwide and was a 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist. His newest novel, The Cove, will be released in April 2012.
Glenis Redmond
Glenis Redmond is a poet and educator born in Sumter, South Carolina on Shaw Air Force Base.  She attended Woodmont High School and graduated from Erskine College and holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College. Though her roots are firmly grounded in the red clay of the South, Glenis’ outlook was also shaped and molded by her family’s military trek, which has made her a product of many worlds. She continues this multi-fold journey by traveling the country over 175 days a year bringing poetry to the masses. The cultural edges she encounters continue to shape and define her walk as a poet. She speaks to all. Glenis is a native of Greenville, South Carolina, with many ties to North Carolina where she lived for 13 years. She serves on the North Carolina Humanities Council Board. She also served on the task force that created the first Writer-in-Residence at the National Historic Home Site of Carl Sandburg and is the spokesperson for the “Where to? What next?” student poetry project of the Carl Sandburg Home. She is a Kennedy Center Teaching Artist. She is a North Carolina Arts Council Literary Fellow, a Cave Canem Fellow and an Hermitage Fellow. Glenis Redmond was a recipient of a Vermont Writing Center Fellowship granted by the William Matthews Estate, 2002, and has received similar awards from the Atlantic Center for the Arts including a 2011 award from the center. She is a widely published and award winning poet. Her latest book is entitled Under the Sun. Glenis has released two CDs of her poetry and views on poetry and an award-winning DVD. She has been published in Meridians, Heartstone, Black Arts Quarterly, Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review, Emrys Journal, Bum Rush the Page: Def Poetry Jam, and Poetry Slam: The Competitive Art of Performance She is a Denny C. Plattner Award winner for Outstanding Poetry awarded from the journal, Appalachian Heritage. Glenis Redmond believes poetry has the mouth to speak when all other mouths are silent.
David Joy
David Joy grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina and moved to Appalachia in 2003 to study  literature at Western Carolina University. He received a Bachelor's in 2007 and later a Master's in professional writing in 2009. His first book, Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman's Journey, was published in 2011 by Bright Mountain Books and has since been named a finalist for the SELC Reed Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment. Critics have compared the book to works such as David James Duncan's classic The River Why and praised Joy's "poetic romanticism" and "clear, clean prose," adding that the book is "a classic to which readers will keep returning." Joy is currently marketing a second work of narrative nonfiction titled, Ruth: A Beautiful Dismantling, to potential publishers. His creative nonfiction has appeared in magazines and journals such as Bird Watcher's Digest, The Wilderness House Literary Review, and Smoky Mountain Living. He currently lives in Glenville, North Carolina where he works as a staff writer and columnist for the Crossroads Chronicle.
David Joy
Author of Growing Gills: A Fly Fisherman's Journey
www.david-joy.com
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