Mountian High: A Poetry and Prose Anthology
90 pages containing 70 authors. See bios below.
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About the Book
About the Contributors

Upcoming Anthologies

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About the book

This collection of poetry and prose relating to the Mountains: people, places, town, attitudes, landscape, outdoors recreation any time of year.  Basically, anything with a mountain flavor.


About the Contributors 


JS Absher, www.jsabsher.bluedomino.com, lives in Durham, NC. His work has appeared in various publications. His book, The Burial of Anyce Shepherd, was published by Main Street Rag in 2006.
Matthew G. Adams’ poetry has appeared in Mountain Time, Home for the Holidays, and Looking Back. Matthew lives in Jacksonville, NC.
Sandra Ervin Adams’ poetry has appeared in previous Old Mountain Press anthologies. Her first book of poetry was Union Point Park Poems, and her second will be Weymouth and Beyond. This year she was an adult student poet in the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series. She resides in Jacksonville, NC.

Frederick Bassett’s poems have appeared in more than forty journals and anthologies. Paraclete Press has published two books of “found” poetry that he created from Biblical lyrics – Love: The Song of Songs (2002) and Awake My Heart (1998). A retired academic with a Ph.D. in Biblical literature, he lives at Hilton Head, South Carolina, with his wife Peg.

Joann Bishop recently had three poems published in New River High Tide 2008 and two poems published in Tale Spinners Summer 2008.

Jenny Bruns currently lives in Fayetteville, North Carolina with her husband and son. The poem, “Spans,” was inspired while in Alaska helping a friend through treatment of breast cancer.

Stuart Burroughs has been involved since childhood in visual art, poetry, and music. She has taught English and art, and her paintings hang in many homes. A collection of her poems, Beyond the Hills, can be purchased on Amazon.com or from Chapel Hill Press, NC. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and other publications. Stuart lives in Chapel Hill, NC, where she writes, paints, and plays piano for others.

Suzanne Carey’s work has appeared in literary journals in the US and abroad. A native Californian, she currently lives in Menlo Park, CA, and works as a financial manager at Stanford University. She spends the happiest two weeks of each summer writing at Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

Jim Clark’s most recent book is Notions: A Jim Clark Miscellany. His band The Near Myths just released their second CD, Words to Burn. He is the Elizabeth H. Jordan Professor of Southern Literature and Writer in Residence at Barton College and lives in the country, near Wilson, NC, with his dogs.

Ed Cockrell is a published poet residing in Chapel Hill, NC. He is the current president of the Poetry Council of North Carolina, Inc.

Michael Colonnese directs the Creative Writing Program at Methodist University in Fayetteville, NC, and serves as the Managing Editor of Longleaf Press.

Sonja Contoiswas born at an early age, has lived a long time, and done a lot. She credits her love of writing and warped insights to her sixth grade teacher who looked like she imagined Ichabod Crane should. Sonja lives with her husband on a horse farm in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina.

Susan Cook-Jahme is a South African writer and lives at the southern most tip of Africa, l’Agulhas where ancient mariners risked their lives navigating the windy Cape of Storms. She is a keen photographer, an artist, writes poetry and children’s stories. You can find her book of poetry African Dust on the Soles of My Feet and her latest children’s book, Africa’s Amazing ABC which she has both written and illustrated for sale at www.lulu.com

Phebe Davidson is the author of several books of poems, most recently Milk and Brittle Bone from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. A collection of minutes, The Surface of Things, is forthcoming in 2009 from David Robert Books. She lives in Westminster, SC.

Terri Kirby Erickson is the author of Thread Count. Her work has been published or accepted by Pisgah Review, Broad River Review, Dead Mule, Christian Science Monitor, Paris Voice, Old Mountain Press, Thieves Jargon, Forsyth Woman, WomenBloom, Parent:Wise Austin, Silver Boomer Books, the Hickory Women’s Resource Center, and others. One of her poems won second place in the category of “Light Verse” in a 2008 poetry contest sponsored by the Poetry Council of North Carolina.

Sue Farlow is the president of the North Carolina Poetry Society. She teaches English, Journalism and Yearbook at Asheboro High School. She has two grown sons and lives on a 55 acre farm with her husband in Climax, NC.

Ann Fogelman is a writer of memories in prose and poetry. Her work has been published in anthologies, The Noble Generation Volume II, That Thing You Do, Southern Mist, other anthologies and various school publications. She is a member of Bay Area Writers League, Gulf Coast Poets, Poetry Society of Texas and The Arts Alliance Center in Clear Lake. Ann currently lives in Friendswood, TX.

Dare Freeman Fordis a freelance writer with a background in education. Ford recently published Don’t Make me Turn this Bus Around, a chronicle of her adventures as a teenage bus driver in her native Anson County, NC. Her work has appeared in several regional publications, and OMP’s Looking Back, Night Whispers and Southern Mist. Ford currently lives in Hendersonville, NC.

Marian Gowan, a graduate of Tufts University, retired to Hendersonville, NC from western NY in 2001. She contributed to American Patchwork, published by St. Martins Press in April 2007. Her work has also appeared in several regional publications, and in four OMP anthologies.

Phyllis Jean Green, a repeat offender, reads, writes, and messes around in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her work began being published in 1986. She hopes to write until she drops.

Robin Greene is professor of English and Director of the Writing Center at Methodist University. She is also co-founder and editor of Longleaf Press. Greene has published two books, a chapbook, and her work regularly appears in literary journals. She lives in Fayetteville, NC.

Bill Griffin is a family doc in rural Elkin, NC, where his “writer’s group” is a hawkswept footpath that wanders up the Blue Ridge. His submitted poem in this anthology, “Raven”, is from the collection, SNAKE DEN RIDGE, A Bestiary,published by March Street Press and illustrated by Linda French Griffin. The 25 poems allow the wild creatures of the Smoky Mountains to speak their mind and remind us of our connection to all creation.

Kerri Mai Habben lives in Raleigh, NC, where she works as a writer and a photographer. Her articles, essays, and poetry have appeared in literary journals and other publications. She recently completed an assignment preparing columns for the News and Observer. Currently she is working on a novel, set in 1929 at a tuberculosis sanitarium.

Ken Hada’s poetry appears in The Way of the Wind (Village Books Press) and in journals such as Oklahoma Today, Westview, Crosstimbers, RE:AL, Kansas City Voices and others. He directs the annual Scissortail Creative Writing Festival held each April in Ada, Oklahoma where he lives.

Mark E. Harden is a retired United States Army Chief Warrant Officer 3. He currently manages Veterans Affairs at Austin Community College, in Austin, TX. He has written extensively about his military experiences. Mark lives in Georgetown, TX, with his wife, Kathy.

MaXine Carey Harker is a wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, poet/writer,teacher of creative writing, information junkie, who grewup in the sagebrush country of SW Idaho later exchanging it for the lush greenery of Eastern NC. She lives with her husband, Berkley, inGrifton, NC in the same little house on the same street for 50+ years. Her epitaph? She tried to do it all before she died –and it killed her.

Joseph Haymore, a native of North Carolina, was raised in Harnett Co. where he graduated from Benhaven High School. He attended Texas Western College, the University of Maryland, Central Carolina Technical Institute, Fayetteville State University and Guilford University. He began writing poetry at the encouragement of his wife and mentor, Catherine Murphy. He has published three chapbooks and can currently be read in the Old Mountain Press anthology, Southern Mist.

Karen Luke Jackson is a retreat leader who uses the power of story to help people connect role and soul. Her poems and essays have appeared in Alive Now, Hungryhearts, and Ascent Aspirations, a Canadian anthology. Karen lives in Hendersonville, NC, where she enjoys hiking and playing with grandchildren.

Jerry Judge lives in Cincinnati, OH, with an attractive wife, regal cats and feisty dog who makes sure he gets exercise. He has two sons. One son is a sophomore at Ohio State University studying aviation, and the oldest is living his childhood dream of being a firefighter/paramedic. Jerry has published four poetry chapbooks with a fifth on its way in late fall. He has published in dozens of journals and anthologies. 

K. D. Kennedy, Jr. has published two books of poetry, Our Place In Time (2002) and Waiting Out In The Yard (2006). He has been published in the Barton College Crucible, In the Yard, a poetry anthology, and several other anthologies. He is presently writing short stories along with poetry, and is researching a novel when not gainfully employed or producing theater (Hot Summer Nights At The Kennedy).www.HotSummerNightsAtTheKennedy.org

Jo Koster teaches medieval literature and writing at Winthrop University. Recent work has appeared in the collections Southern Mist (Old Mountain Press) and A Cadence of Hooves (Yarroway Mountain Press). When she isn’t finagling ways to spend time in medieval European villages, she and her cat Mishka live in Rock Hill, SC.

Blanche L. Ledford’s work has appeared in Southern Mist, Moonshine and Blind Mules, Lights in the Mountains, and other publications. Her essay, Planting by the Signs, received first place with the Cherokee County Senior Games and she qualified for 2008 State Finals. Blanche lives in Hayesville, NC and enjoys gardening and reading.

Brenda Kay Ledford is a member of North Carolina Writer’s Network. Her work has appeared in Southern Mist, Asheville Poetry Review, Our State, Pembroke Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and upcoming in The Journal of Kentucky Studies. She received the Paul Green Award for her poetry chapbook, Shew Bird Mountain. Her third poetry chapbook, Sacred Fire, will be released in September by Finishing Line Press. Brenda lives in Hayesville, NC.

Michael H. Lythgoe retired as an Air Force officer before earning an MFA from Bennington College. His chapbook BRASS won the Kinloch Rivers contest in 2006. His full length collection HOLY WEEK is available at Amazon.com. Mike is a contributing editor for Windhover. He has poems in The Caribbean Writer 2008. He is a Past President of The Academy For Lifelong Learning at USCA in Aiken, SC, where he lives.

Al Manning is a retired Naval Officer, and a retired Instructor in Microcomputer systems. He lives in Waynesville, NC, in the middle of the Great Smoky Mountains. Al is a newspaper columnist and author of the Curmudgeon’s Book of Nursery Rhymes.

David Treadway Manning is a California native living in Cary, NC. A Pushcart nominee, his poems have appeared in various journals, five chapbooks and the full-length collection, The Flower Sermon, published by Main Street Rag in 2007.

Caren Masem’s poetry has appeared in In the Yard, Appalachian Writers Guild Anthology MMVIII, The State, and on-line. She conducts workshops in Greensboro, NC, where she lives and writes. Since retiring from teaching she volunteers with the Greensboro Public Library’s Life Verse Project and as an ESL tutor. 

Halle Meyer lives in Raleigh, NC. Children’s stories are her favorite to write and characters who know who they are, are her favorite to meet in the pages she reads. Halle is currently writingThe Crumpster, a tale of a small one who shows an old one how to throw away hate.

Stephen Miles has garnered many awards including the Sanskrit Award for outstanding achievement in literature, two first place poetry awards from Tar Heel Poets, the Thompson Theater Playwrights Award, the Cambridge University (UK) Stallis Poetry Award, the Crucible State Poetry Award, and a North Carolina Playwrights Readers Choice Award. He lives with a long-suffering wife and a crate of cats in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Jerome Norris lives in coastal North Carolina where there are no mountains, but having been partly raised in New Mexico and Colorado, he has come into contact with a few. He is a retired lawyer who lives with his beautiful wife by a pond near New Bern.

Margaret L. Parrish’spoems have appeared in Mountain Time, Poets for Peace, Bay Leaves, The Lyricist, and other publications. She lives and works in Raleigh, NC.

Joyce Richardson is a past recipient of an Ohio Arts Council award in fiction. She is the authorof a novel, On Sunday Creek, and a poetry chapbook, The Reader. “Aspen” will appear in hernew chapbook, Sailing Without A Sail, a collection of travel poems coming out in 2009. Joyce is married to a fiction writer and the two of them reside in Athens, OH.

Pat Riviere-Seel is Associate Editor of the Asheville Poetry Review. Her first collection of poems, No Turning Back Now, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2004. She lives with her sweet husband and two spoiled cats in Asheville, NC.

Edwina Rooker grew up in Warrenton, NC. She holds degrees from Duke University and The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her poems have appeared in several Old Mountain Press publications. Today she lives in Bridgeton, NC and writes a newspaper column, Observations for The Warren Record.

Dr. Lynn Veach Sadler, a former college president, has published widely in academics and creative writing. Editor, poet, fiction/creative nonfiction writer, and playwright, she has a poetry collection and novel forthcoming; a novella and short-story collection were recently published. She was named 2007 Writer of the Year by California’s elizaPress and won Wayne State’s 2008 Pearson Award for a play on Iraq.

Flora Ann Scearce, native North Carolinian, lives in Trent Woods, NC. She is the author of Singer of an Empty Day and Cotton Mill Girl, winners of the NC Society of Historians’ Fiction Award. Both novels are based on the life of Mrs. Scearce’s mother who wrote extensively of mountain life, lore, medicine, and music, as well as Piedmont Mill village life. A third “in progress” novel continues the saga of Selena Wright Sanders. 

Joanna Catherine Scott is the author of the novels The Road from Chapel Hill (a sequel Child of the South is due out in April 2009); Cassandra, Lost; The Lucky Gourd Shop; and Charlie, and the prizewinning poetry collections Breakfast at the Shangri-la, Fainting at the Uffizi, and Night Huntress. A graduate of the University of Adelaide and Duke University, she was born in England, raised in Australia, and now lives in Chapel Hill.

Audell Shelburne is a Texas native. Currently he is the Editor of Windhover, a journal of Christian literature. He also directs the Windhover Annual Literary Festival. He heads theEnglish Department at The University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, TX, where he lives withhis family. Audell is a John Donne scholar. 

Sybil Austin Skakle, Hatteras, NC native, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, BS Pharmacy, degree in 1949,and has lived in Chapel Hill since 1958. Her work began appearing in anthologies and other publications after 1990 retirement from hospital pharmacy. She published a poetry book: Searchings in 2001: her early memoir: Confessions of an Outer Banks Filly in 2002. Other poetry and prose have appeared in various anthologies, publications i.e The State and The Island Breeze.

Susan Snowden’s stories and poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, online journals, and anthologies. She has won prizes for her work from Writer’s Digest magazine, Appalachian Writers Association, NC Writer’s Network, and others. Susan is a freelance book editor based in Hendersonville, NC. She also coaches writers (fiction and nonfiction). 

Sandra Soli, former columnist/poetry editor for ByLine, holds an honors M.A. and lives in Oklahoma City, OK. Poems appeared most recently in SLAB, Ellipsis, and Oklahoma Today. Her work has been featured on NPR and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sandy’s second chapbook, What Trees Know, received the 2008 Oklahoma Book Award. Her article on prose poetry appears in the 2009 edition of Poet’s Market. She enjoys collaborative projects with artists in other disciplines.

Dorothea Spiegel lives in Hiawassee, GA. She is a member of the North Carolina Writers Network West and The North Georgia Mountains Writers Club. Her work has been published in many of the Old Mountain Press anthologies, Lights In The Mountains and others. She has edited several newsletters and had many newspaper articles published.

Earl W. Spiegel lives in Hiawassee, GA. He has been certified Supreme Master Gem Cutter by The American Society of Gem Cutters and taught for several years at William Holland Lapidary School in Young Harris, GA. He attended meetings of the North Georgia Mountains Writers Club where he read several of his essays and stories. 

Dorothy Anne Spruzen recently earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. In another life she was Manager of Publications for a Northern Virginia defense contractor. Her short stories have appeared in several publications, and she has completed two novels, both of which are currently under consideration for representation 

Tonya Staufer’s work has appeared in Spirit of the Smokies, A Long Story Short, the anthologies, Looking Back, Night Whispers, Southern Mist, Sand, Sea, and Sail, and a Christmas Anthology due out in Fall 2008. Tonya and her husband hope soon to call their newly built lake home in Saluda, NC home.

Cassie Premo Steele is an award-winning and widely published poet and writer who lives in Columbia, South Carolina. She is the author of four books–the most recent is My Peace. She teaches classes in Ecofeminism and Ecopoetry at USC’s Green Quad. More informationcan be found at www.cassiepremosteele.com

Dennis Ward Stiles has published in many journals and anthologies, including previous Old Mountain Press collections. Pudding House issued his fifth Chapbook Humdinger in 2007, and Main Street Rag has scheduled his first full-length book, The Fire in Which We Burn for early 2009. He lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife Mary Jane. He believes in mischief, and not much else. 

Nancy Dew Taylor’s poems have appeared in The South Carolina Review, Kalliope, Appalachian Journal, Scribble, New England Watershed, Tar River Poetry, and in anthologies such as Mountain Time, Southern Mist, Pinesong, and A Millennial Sampler of South Carolina Poetry. In November 2008, Emrys Press will publish her chapbook, Stepping on Air. She lives in Greenville, SC.

Katherine Tracy lives with her husband Charles Dellert in Thibodaux, LA where she teaches English at Nicholls State University. She recently published the book A Savage Wisdom by Norman German (Thunder Rain Publishing Corp.) www.thunder-rain.com/pub.html forthcoming this year. Her poetry has appeared in publications by Old Mountain Press, Sherman Asher Publishing, and Foothills Publishing. Her poetry will appear in the winter issue of The Magnolia Quarterly published by Gulf Coast Writers Association. In her submitted work, “Trinity Site is where the first atomic bomb was tested at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945" (U.S. Army).

Chris Vierck lives and writes in Lenoir, North Carolina.

Betty Watson has written poetry and short stories since college. She won second prize in a short story contest published in WNC Woman. She has won awards given by Asheville Writers Workshop. Her work has appeared in Night Whispers, Sand, Sea and Sail and Southern Mist. She moved to Flat Rock, North Carolina, from Massachusetts. with Doug, her husband, in 1995

Priscilla Webster-Williams lives in Durham, NC. Her poetry has won several awards, including one chosen by Fred Chappell for the North Carolina Poetry Society’s annual Poet Laureate Award. Her work has also appeared in other local and national poetry magazines and anthologies, including Ad Hoc Monadnock, a book about a grand old mountain in New Hampshire.

Evelyne Weeks lives in Rock Hill, SC and teaches in the English department at Winthrop University. Her poems about her childhood in the Appalachian mountains have appeared in The Hollins Critic, Appalachian Heritage and the anthology Out of the Rough.

Cecily Hamlin Wells lives in Hendersonville, North Carolina where she studies and writes with a group of fellow writers and poets. She has published short fiction in the Looking Back Anthology, poems in Long Story Short and in Sand, Sea & Sail Anthology. She was awarded an Honorable Mention for her entry, Parting Gift, in the 76th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition.

Charles “Hawk” Weyantlives in Fayetteville. NC. where he has been a member of Writers’ Ink Guild for over twenty years. A true imagist poet, he read on Public Radio for ten years and has been published in eleven anthologies. His first book An Odyssey In Broken Rhythms And Ragged Lines was published in 2006.

Glenda Sumner Wilkins grew up on a North Carolina tobacco farm, and daydreamed of faraway places. Decades later, she and her husband lived in both Luxembourg, and Geneva, Switzerland. Countries where published: USA; Canada; Spain: Luxembourg; Switzerland; Great Britain. She is a member of the NCPS and NCWN, and has won several poetry awards. Today, she resides in Winterville, NC, with her husband, and Bustopher, the cat about town.

Nancy H. Womack is a retired educator who enjoys gardening and traveling. Her poetry has appeared in Appalachian Heritage, The Thomas Wolfe Review, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, The Mentor, Bay Leaves and in three previous OMP anthologies, Home for the Holidays, Sand, Sea and Sail, and Night Whispers. She lives in Rutherfordton, NC. 

Orville (Pete) Work was born 3 December 1916 on the western edge of the Sacramento Mountains at Orogrande, New Mexico. Pete grew up in and loved these mountains. After contracting rheumatic fever he became unable to breathe the thin mountain air. My grandfather never forgot the mountains, keeping them in his heart, though he could never return to their majesty. He died 6 August 1963 at Kermit, Texas far from his beloved mountains. – Chuck Dellert, the author’s grandson. The included poem was submitted posthumously by Ina Dellert, the author’sdaughter

Barbara Ledford Wright’s work has appeared in several previous Old Mountain Press anthologies. She’s been published in Readers are Leaders (Express Yourself 101 Vol. 2), Muscadine: A Southern Journal, Conceit/Magazine, The Oxford So & So, Fireflies and June Bugs, and other journals. She presently lives in Shelby, NC.

C. Pleasants York is the author of two books of poetry, and is President of the Lee County Arts Council. She and her husband Guy serve as Second Vice-President of the North Carolina Poetry Society. The poem “Appalachian Tapestry” is about her grandmother Dora May Key Pleasants who taught her to weave and to make rugs. C. Pleasants York lives and teaches in Sanford, NC.
 

 



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