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At the banquet dinner for the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival, a local minister enters stage right and steps up to the podium to lead us in prayer. On cue, the roomful of nearly two hundred [...]

Kathryn Stripling Byer’s reading and talk affirms my understanding of how limitless our imaginations can be. She describes the psychic landscape of her own mind as the well-spring for her [...]

Hello Planet!Friday and Saturday is the Carolina Mountains Literary Festival!Are you going? Yes. Books. Writers. Readers. Mountains. Sunshine like glitter on turning maple leaves. The Poet [...]

I go to a party near the craft school in honor of “Tupak Shakur’s D-Day.” In other words, it’s a houseful of white craft dudes who dig hip-hop in the heart of Appalachia, sipping forties and [...]

I summit Pinnacle Mountain and nestle my back into the boulders, surrounded by dwarf sumach, mountain blueberry, and rhododendron on all sides. The hike is short and sweet because I park my car [...]

I hike up the Woody Ridge Trail to get out of my head. According to the map, the trail only cuts 8/10 of a mile into National Forest before it peters out at a junction with White Oak Creek. But I [...]

I went to Community Work Day because it’s good to remember how to talk to human beings and use my body to lift and build things and in general, to practice being social and generous. GP and I [...]

Persona poem first draft.Any subject. First draft.100+ words, 20 minutes or less.Ready, Set, GO! The Young Floridian Sweat on the undersides of my thighsSkin to cotton to vinylFeels like home in [...]

I go to BigCity, NC to watch “Little Miss Sunshine” at the Fine Arts Theatre with a friend. Unlike the last film I saw there, a depressing documentary, this is upbeat and comedic. Somehow the [...]

This is the first year in five years that I am not “A Teacher,” in the official sense of the word. Not even part time. Which is why, when I drove to the Montessori school this morning to [...]