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Across the courtyard from me there’s a writer with a Pushcart Prize. Two walls over? A national bestselling memoirist with a contract for book two with Scribner. At dinner? Poets with more [...]

The starlings are migrating south by the thousands and each sunrise and sunset, hundreds of them alight on the trees and silos here at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Walking from the [...]

We live dormitory style in the Fellows Residence, a single bed and small, functional room for each Fellow with a shared bathroom in between. Most rooms are upstairs, and downstairs are the [...]

This summer was hard. I made that no secret. I pieced together a fall schedule in Texas thanks to a generous friend and a new residency–Madrono. While there, I was able to make serious [...]

Today THE CLAW hits the road for perhaps the shortest journey yet in these 22 months (and counting)… Here’s the route from Celo, NC to Amherst, VA and Virginia Center for the Creative [...]

We finished up on Friday with great weather, great luck in on-the-spot interviews, and great cheer all around. We interviewed local legend Byrl Ballew of Ballew’s Country Store and the [...]

I’m moved nearly beyond words tonight, having just spent the day with a professional director, cinematographer, and audio specialist who believed enough in Lost Crossings to turn [...]

In 2008, I got a hair-brained idea. I called my hair-brained friend Shane and together we decided to embark on a year-long writing/photography collaboration without pay, just to see what [...]

I’m happy to report that I’ve been accepted as a paid fiction reader and creative writing instructor for Our Stories Literary Journal, one of the only peer-review literary journals [...]

There’s nothing that says home in Appalachia more than the wind-blown gold, red, and orange leaves that greeted me at the end of THE CLAW’s latest 1300-mile journey. The car cruised [...]