MEET THE CONTRIBUTORS

L. Ward Abel, native of Georgia, is a lifelong poet, composer of music (most recently with Abel, Rawls and Hayes), and spoken-word performer (Scapeweavel). His poems have been published worldwide, in print and online, including White Pelican Review, The Pedestal, erbacce (UK), Versal (Netherlands), Word Riot, Texas Poetry Journal, Open Wide (UK), Poems Niederngasse (Switzerland), Southern Gothic, Dead Drunk Dublin (Ireland), and Tertulia. His chapbook, Peach Box and Verge, was published by Little Poem Press (Falls Church, VA). His new book of poems, Jonesing For Byzantium, will be published late 2006 at UK Authors Press (Bristol, UK).

Mary Frazier Brennan, a native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, has spent most of her working days in Atlanta, in marketing and business communications. She has over twenty years of experience, first with Turner Broadcasting, creating short-format television scripts, and then for a high-profile architecture firm. Mary currently lives in New York City, where she works in world mission communications for The Episcopal Church. E-Mail Mary

Gilda Griffith Brown writes short fiction; her stories have appeared in online venues, including USADEEPSOUTH.COM. She has also compiled, written, and published The Scofield Letters: Texas Pioneers, a nonfiction work based on nineteenth-century family letters. A retired RN whose specialty was Geriatric Nursing, Gilda often finds her writing centered on the elderly—people who provide strong characters and share some of the sweetest and dearest messages of life. She lives in her hometown of Canton, Mississippi.

Chance Chambers was a top 100 winner in the Mainstream/Literary Short Story category of Writer’s Digest’s 73rd Annual Writing Competition for his story “Miss October.” He has also been a quarter-finalist for Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope: All-Story & New Century Writers Short Story Competition, a finalist for Glimmer Train’s Poetry Open, and a three-time nominee for the Sensored Starving Artist awards in fiction and poetry. Originally from Paris, Tennessee, Chance has lived in Nashville since 1984.

Louise Colln is the author of San Antonio Seduction, published by Premium Press America in April, 2006. She has written four novels for Heartsong Presents: Birdsong Road, Falling Water Valley, Mountain House, and A Place for Love (published internationally and reprinted in an anthology). Louise has adapted three children’s classics for Dalmatian Press. Her Poetry in Two Voices was read at the 2005 Romanian Writers’ Festival. A resident of Franklin, Tennessee, Louise is a board member of the Tennessee Writers Alliance and secretary and board member of the Williamson County Council for the Written Word.

Judy Lockhart DiGregorio was recently nominated by the Tennessee Arts Commission for inclusion in SouthernArtistry.com, an adjudicated online artist registry spotlighting outstanding Southern artists. Judy is a monthly humor columnist for Senior Living magazine and has published more than 100 essays, columns, and humorous poems in The Writer, Army/Navy Times, Episcopal Life, New Millennium Writings, CC Motorcycle Newsmagazine, Church Musician Today, and other publications. Judy is a frequent workshop presenter. She has lived in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, since 1969.

Jennifer Dix has been published in Vanderbilt Medical Center’s House Organ, Hometown magazine, and in various other community publications. She writes poetry and creative nonfiction and is a member of the Tennessee Writers Alliance. Jennifer spent her childhood and teenage years in Weakley County, Tennessee, primarily in the small town of Palmersville. She is presently employed in market research and has worked in advertising and nonprofits. A graduate of Austin Peay State University, she currently resides in Springfield, Tennessee, with her husband and two cats. E-mail Jennifer

Susie Dunham writes a column titled “All I’m Sayin’ Is. . .” for The Grassland Gazette and Westview newspapers in Nashville, Tennessee, circulation 12,000. Susie, born and raised in upstate New York, is a Yankee with a Southern soul, who started taking her humor and her writing seriously at the age of 50. She has attended the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop and numerous other writers’ conferences and is a member of the Tennessee Writers Alliance, Writers In CAPS, and the Williamson County Council for the Written Word. She currently lives in Franklin, Tennessee. E-mail Susie

Nancy Fletcher-Blume is president of the Tennessee Writers Alliance and president of the Williamson County Council for the Written Word, as well as a ten-year founding member. She is the author of a children’s book, The Cast Iron Dogs. She is also published in Our Voices: Williamson County Literary Review, 1995, 1997, and 1998. Nancy has condensed and adapted two children’s classics for Dalmatian Press: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (a top seller in its fourth printing) and Kidnapped. She signed Treasure Island at the 2004 Southern Festival of Books. Her poetry has received awards in several states, and her Civil War Poetry in Two Voices was read at the 2005 Romanian Writers’ Festival in Bucharest. Nancy lives in Franklin, Tennessee.
E-mail Nancy

Connie Foster, first grade teacher by day and writer by night, is a lifelong resident of Woodbury, Tennessee. She writes short fiction, creative nonfiction, and is completing her first novel. Connie lives with her husband, Ronnie, who struggles to communicate since a major stroke in 1997, and her son, Jake, whose ear for good storytelling supports and inspires her writing. Her story “The Sweetest Word” is a reflection of Connie’s ceaseless effort to understand and empathize with those who cannot speak for themselves. E-mail Connie

William W. (Bill) Fraker’s poetry has appeared in The Witness magazine. He graduated from Lynchburg College with a degree in English and obtained graduate degrees from Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has taught at Duke University and Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a psychotherapist and manager for a company improving the quality of health care in the public sector. He lives with his wife near Richmond, Virginia. E-mail Bill

Neil O. Jones was raised in Texas, but has resided in Middle Tennessee since 1978. With a lifelong interest in writing, he has taught college English courses in Texas and Tennessee since 1974. Neil has completed a book-length collection of stories based on the quirky characters he knew and the challenges they faced in his growing-up years in the 1950s and ‘60s in the South Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas. His works have appeared in various print and online venues, including Perceptions 2005, 2006; Southern Humorists.com; and Southern Hum. Neil and his wife reside in the country near Columbia, Tennessee, with their hounds and horses. E-mail Neil

Jane K. Kretschmann’s works have appeared or are forthcoming in ByLine, Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream, Writer’s Journal, Fresh Boiled Peanuts, Artistry of Life, Right Hand Pointing, Wavelength: Poetry in Prose and Verse, Common Threads, Sandcutters, Ohio Poetry Day Best of 2003 and 2004, NFSPS Encore 2005, The Farmer’s Daughter anthology, the NPR program “Theme and Variations,” the Dayton Metro Library Web site, and the Akron (Ohio) Art Museum Web site, on which her poem “Crazy Quilt” was posted. Jane grew up in Alabama and lives in Ohio, where she is an Associate Professor of English and a member of the Edison Writers’ Club. E-mail Jane

Joyce A. O. Lee is the author of the novel The Length of a Love Song, published in 2005 by Cold Tree Press. Her poems were included in Our Voices: Williamson County Literary Review, 1997 and 1998. She attended Columbia State Community College, where she studied literature, English composition, and creative writing. She has studied creative writing with Richard Speight; Clay Stafford; Darnell Arnoult; and Maggie Vaughn, Poet Laureate of Tennessee. She is a member of the Tennessee Writers Alliance and the Williamson County Council for the Written Word. Joyce is originally from Kansas City, Missouri, and has lived in the Middle Tennessee area since 1973. She has been writing full time for fifteen years.

S. R. Lee is the author of Granny Lindy, published in 2005. She writes fiction, short nonfiction, and poetry. Sally has a Christmas carol published by Oxford University Press. She took the Woodland Award for Best Poet in the Cookeville Creative Writers’ Contest, May 2000, and has read at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. She was contributing editor of The Poets of St. Paul’s, an anthology of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, Tennessee. She has also worked on extensive “family lore” documents for other people and is currently preparing an anthology of historical articles on Beechville, the former name of the community in which she lives. Sally has spent her lifetime in Middle Tennessee. She and her husband live on the family farm, where their daughter trains horses.

Ginger Manley is a seventh-generation Tennessean, who resides with her husband in Williamson County. After forty years in health care, the last twenty-five of which she specialized as a Certified Sex Therapist, Ginger has recently closed her professional practice to pursue a new career as a writer. Her four grandchildren provide rich experiences for her personal essays, and her years of clinical practice and life in general are nourishing the background for a fictional trilogy Ginger is writing about sex, God, and dancing, and the redemption of three southern women.

Ben Norwood is the author of Plenum, a collection of poems, published by SRLR Press of Austin, Texas. Seventy-four of his poems, stories, and translations have been published since 1973 in journals and magazines throughout the USA. Ben attended the University of Texas at Austin and Southern Methodist University. He was a Gulbenkian Foundation fellow at the University of Lisbon in 1973. He has been a member of The Writer’s Garret, the Tennessee Writers Alliance, the Association of Literary Translators, and the Academy of American Poets. He is a native of Dallas, Texas, and currently resides in Franklin, Tennessee.

Lonnye Sue Sims Pearson is Associate Editor and Message Board Manager for USADEEPSOUTH.COM—”Best Spot for all Things Southern!”—where many of her favorite memoirs are published, including her story “Mamaw and the Night Visitor.” She has also been published in the e-zine Queen Power and in Tombigbee Country Magazine. Lonnye Sue is an eighth grade English teacher, who writes memoirs in her spare time and maintains an online journal for sanity’s sake. She is a Mississippi Delta native, who now resides in Kinston, North Carolina.

Marion Bolick Perutelli is a native Tennessean, reared in Memphis. She is the author of a historical novel, The Mud Daubers, and a novella, From Whence He Came And Short Stories, both set in Memphis and published by Cold Tree Press in 2005. Her short stories and essays have been published in newspapers and anthologies, including Our Voices: Williamson County Literary Review, 1995, 1997, and 1998. Marion was a charter member of the Tennessee Writers Alliance. Currently a resident of Brentwood, Tennessee, she is also a member of WordSmiths, Ink; the Council for the Written Word; and the Fiction Writers at The Martin Center of Senior Citizens.

Julia Lee Pollock (Gillen) writes “Random Lives,” a bi-monthly column, as well as feature stories for The Daily Herald in Columbia, Tennessee. She serves on the Editorial Committee of the Maury County Archives, and she is a member of ASCAP. She has completed her first novel, A Southern Dog’s Tale. Julia lives in Columbia, Tennessee.

Currie Alexander Powers is the author of the novel Soul of a Man, published by Cold Tree Press. Her writing has also appeared in Tin House. Though she was born in Toronto, Canada, her heart belongs to the bayous of Louisiana and the Mississippi Delta. Currie spent her early years working as a musician, playing and recording with such artists as The CeeDees, Bruce Cockburn, Rick Danko and Stephen Fearing. She is also a songwriter, and her songs have been recorded by Sara Craig and Blackie & The Rodeo Kings, among others. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband and four cats. E-mail Currie

Nelda Rachels is a freelance writer who has published poetry and nonfiction in Purdue’s Writing Lab Newsletter, The Draft Horse Journal, Country Handcrafts, Back Home in Kentucky, Hometown, and others. She enjoys her part-time job tutoring writers and students in the Hortense Parrish Writing Lab at the University of Tennessee at Martin. She has been married to her master gardener husband for thirty-three years and has two grown children. In her spare time, she loves to read nonfiction on her front porch. E-mail Nelda

Thomas D. Reynolds teaches at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas, and has published poems in various print and online journals, including New Delta Review, Alabama Literary Review, Aethlon-The Journal of Sport Literature, The MacGuffin, Flint Hills Review, Midwest Poetry Review, Potpourri, Ariga, Strange Horizons, Combat, American Western Magazine, The Pedestal Magazine, Ash Canyon Review, and Orphan Leaf Review.

C. K. Speroff is a writer of stories drawn from the heartache and joy of being female—a daughter, a wife, a mother. Born in Arkansas and raised in Oklahoma, she now resides in Franklin, Tennessee. Writer of fiction and nonfiction, C. K. is a member of Writers in CAPS and the Williamson County Council for the Written Word. E-mail C. K.

Linda Therber has published in community and educational newsletters, a parents’ magazine, the “Nashville Eye” op-ed column of The (Nashville) Tennessean, and as a contributor in a book on multicultural teaching strategies. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, she grew up in Middle Tennessee, where she currently resides. Her writing is rooted in family stories and oral histories that are culled for unspoken words, unguarded moments, and simple truths.

Kristin O’Donnell Tubb writes both fiction and nonfiction for children and adults. A recipient of the Pewter Plate Award for Best Arts Feature in 2005 from Highlights for Children magazine, Kristin has also published stories in Cricket, Spider, Guideposts for Kids, and Wee Ones eMagazine. She has written a number of children’s activity books, many for licensed characters such as Holly Hobbie™, The Powerpuff Girls™, Scooby-Doo™, Strawberry Shortcake™, and the Care Bears™. She is the author of a high-school-targeted anthology, Freedom from Cruel and Unusual Punishment, published by Greenhaven Press in 2005. Kristin has also published travel articles in The (Nashville) Tennessean and Woodall’s Regionals, and leisure pieces in Collector’s News and Antiques and Collecting Magazine.

Kathleen Vibbert’s works have been published in Spillway Review, Electric Acorn, Facets: A Literary Magazine, Lily: A Literary Review, The Criterion Newspaper, Softblow Poetry Journal, Moondance, and Celebrating Creative Women. She enjoys scrapbooking and studying creative writing. Currently, she lives with her husband in Indiana and has three adult children. Her daughter is a graduate of Ole Miss, and Kathleen was greatly inspired by the South during her daughter’s stay in Oxford, Mississippi.

Kory Wells’ novel-in-progress White Line to Graceville was a finalist in the William Faulkner Competition. A software developer, she writes about her desire to be an astronaut and living beyond traditional cultural roles in the anthology She’s Such a Geek (Seal Press, 2006). Her prose has appeared or is forthcoming in various venues, including Birmingham Arts Journal, Long Story Short, and The Cuivre River Anthology, in which her story “Trade Day” first appeared. A native Tennessean who has frequented flea markets and antique malls since she was a child, Kory is able to park in her garage but confesses that her bonus room is virtually impassable. E-mail Kory