Contributors:

Originally from the plains of Missouri, Lynne Bartlett has known the mountains of Appalachia as home for the last six years. She pursues the art of writing near East River Mountain in Bluefield, West Virginia where she lives with her husband and three children. Lynne has a B.A. in Music from the Conservatory of Music at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Besides loving music and teaching piano lessons, she works in the library at Bluefield College. Her poetry has been published in the Bluestone Review.

Jeffery Beam http://www.unc.edu/~jeffbeam is the author of nine books of poems including The Fountain, Visions of Dame Kind, and An Elizabethan Bestiary: Retold. His two volume enhanced CD collection, What We Have Lost: New & Selected Poems is due in late 2001, and songs by composer Lee Hoiby based on poems from Beam’s “Life of the Bee” will premiere at the Weill Recital Hall Carnegie Hall, April 18, 2002. Beam is poetry editor of Oyster Boy Review

When my ancestors came to America they settled in Appalachia, and still, now when I return to those beautiful hills, I feel at home. My heart is truly in the highlands and here in Chapel Hill outside of the mountains I sometimes pretend that the mountains are right outside my window. Luckily they aren’t far away. Appalachian song and myth, as well as the Celtic culture of my ancestors, is bred into my poems and songs. The sequence “little” was written on the porch of my mentor, publisher, and friend Jonathan Williams’s porch in Scaly Mountain, near Highlands during a one week period. The other poems also all respond to the creatures, flora, and atmosphere of the Smokies and what we can learn about ourselves and the world there.

Carol Boggess is Associate Professor of English and Chair of English Department at Mars Hill College. She delivered these remarks at the funeral of James Still, May 1, 2001.

Ole Bye is pursuing a BFA in Photography & Digital Imaging at Virginia Intermont College, Bristol, VA.

Ricks Carson has been active as a writer since his days at Washington and Lee in the 1960’s. He lives with his wife and sons in Atlanta, Georgia, where he teaches and coaches at Pace Academy. Ricks spends his summers in a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. He publishes and reads poetry in the Atlanta area and across the Southeast.

Barbary Chaapel is a member of Barbour County, WV Writers Workshop for the past 15 years. Her work has been included in the anthology, WILD SWEET NOTES, FIFTY YEARS OF WEST VIRGINIA POETRY, 1950-1999, and other small presses, including Grab A Nickel. She has returned to the West Virginia mountains of her birth after living aboard a sailboat, SNOW GOOSE, for 7 years. “Sea and mountain,” she says, “drive my words.”

Mark DeFoe's fourth book of poetry, Aviary, has just been published by Pringle Tree Press. His work has appeared widely in the US, Canada, Great Britain and Europe. He has taught literature and writing at West Virginia Wesleyan College for 25 years.

Preston Gannaway is a Staff Photographer at the Coalfield Progress, Norton, Virginia. Preston received her BFA in Photography from Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Virginia.

Cathryn Hankla has received a Virginia Commission for the Arts grant for her poetry and a PEN Syndicated fiction prize. She has published six books, including a novel, poetry, and short fiction. Cathy is on the writing faculty at Hollins University, her alma mater.

Mark Harris was born in Kentucky and has been teaching English in Southwest Virginia (and loving it!) for nine years. He participates in poetry readings and has helped with the campus literary magazine, Moore Street Review. Mark has written poetry, short fiction, and literary criticism, and is also working on what may become a novel. His work has been published in Studies in Short Fiction, Cithara, and Contra Mundum.

Felicia Mitchell has lived in the Appalachian region of Virginia since 1987, when she moved here to teach at Emory & Henry College. During this time, with the rich influences of both natural setting and artistic communities, her poetry has come into its own. Poems in this issue of Nantahala Review grew out of a residency at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. "Venus of Meadowview" and ""Nudist Lady With Swan Sunglasses" first appeared in Columbia: A Journal of Literature and the Arts

Jimmy Dean Smith is Associate Professor of English and Communications at Union College in Kentucky.

R. Rex Stephenson is Professor of Drama at Ferrum College where he heads the internationally known Jack Tales Players. Rex has published many plays and children’s plays, perhaps the best known of which is The Liberated Cinderella. He is one of the United States’ most recognized authorities on drama for children.

Chris Stewart is member of faculty at Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Virginia where he specializes in Photography & Electronic Media .

Dan Stryk is a Professor of Creative Writing and World Literature at Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, and has lived in Appalachia for fifteen years now, after having spent his early years in Illinios, in the farmlands west of Chicago. He is the author of six nationally published collections of poems and prose parables, including The Artist and the Crow (poems), Purdue University Press. His work has been widely anthologized in major publications, and his poems and prose pieces appear regularly in such journals as TriQuarterly, Commonweal, Poetry Northwest, Western Humanities Review, Southern Humanities Review, Southwest Review, and Now & Then. He has also received a number of important literary awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. A new collection of his informal sonnets, Taping Images to Walls, is forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press (St. Mary’s University, San Antonio, TX) in late 2001.