fiction : poetry : art : blogs : news : back issues : author index        about : editors : guidelines : resources : support

Contributors to storySouth, fall 2001 to present

fall 2001 contributors

Born in Texas, raised in Mississippi, and currently residing in Georgia, Nancy Brooks-Lane has studied writing at the University of Southern Mississippi and has published poems in Magnolia Park and B&N Alley. 

Originally from Virginia, Leslie Carper recently won the Winter-at-the-Refuge Scholarship from the Montana Artists Refuge. A graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop, Leslie's short stories have appeared in a number of literary magazines including American Short Fiction, Antietam Review, Chelsea, Faultline, Icarus, in*tense, Mid-Atlantic Quarterly, New American Writing, New Delta Review, New Literary Journal, Outerbridge, River City Review, and West End Review, among others. She has won a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artists Grant, Ludwig Vogelstein National Foundation Award, Hackney National Literary Short Story Award, Glimmer Train New Writers Award, and been a winner or finalist in the Austin Heart of Film Festival, Massachusetts Film Council, Nicholl Fellowship, and Virginia Governor's Film Office screenplay competitions. She has also completed a collection of twelve short stories, Father Knows Best, whose unifying focus is the baby-boom generation and the fifties post-war TV era that formed them.

Fictionista and closet poet Lisette García mends her own costumes and rides the bus to and from shows while she awaits her Chariot to Fame.  Order her spoken-word album, "CUENTOS LIBRES: no place like home," via ligarcia@yahoo.com.

Pamela K. Hauck fled the city like a gypsy in the night, seeking refuge in the green mountains of Georgia. She is active in local music jams and online writing groups. Her writing credits include Flashquake Literary Journal, The Emerald Collection and Bulkhead Laxative for the Literary Mind.

Julie Ann Shapiro currently lives in sunny San Diego, California, but her roots are deep in the south. She says, "I was born in Savannah, Georgia, and spent countless childhood summers chaising fireflies with my cousins, enjoying mounds of grits, and peach cobbler." Julie's stories have been published in BlueCollarPress.homestead.com, author-network.com, Mega Era Magazine, PacificNWpotpourri.com, Millenniumshift.com, and Cenotaph. Her story "Bare Bones" will be published in the April addition of Orgease Journal and her story "Old Woman In The Dream" will be published in the upcoming issue of Urban Express. To look at Julie's writing services to businesses, check out her website at http://www.gotdot.com.

James Simpson is a writer and graphic artist living in the Atlanta metro area. His work has appeared recently in Big City Lit.

Anthony Neil Smith is from the Mississippi Gulf Coast. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Connecticut Review, Barcelona Review, Handheld Crime, and several others. He is an editor with Mississippi Review Web.

Natasha Trethewey's first book of poems, Domestic Work (Graywolf, 2000) was selected by Rita Dove for the 1999 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Domestic Work also received the 2001 Lillian Smith Book Award and the 2001 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Her second volume, Bellocq's Ophelia (Graywolf, 2002) was a finalist for the Academy of American Poets' James Laughlin Prize.Trethewey's work has also garnered the Grolier Poetry Prize and a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in numerous anthologies, including Best American Poetry 2000. A native of Mississippi, Trethewey now lives in Decatur, Georgia, and teaches creative writing at Emory University. 

summer 2002 Contributors

Jamie Allen grew up in Tampa, FL. He spent five years writing for CNN.com. He lives in the Atlanta area with his wife and two children.

Originally from Mississippi, Adam Clay now lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas with his dog, where he is working on an MFA degree. He has published poems in Mississippi Review, The Oklahoma Review, and Slipstream. He is the Literary Editor of a new magazine, The Aux Arc Review.

Aaron Gwyn grew up on a farm in central Oklahoma. In 1999, he received his Masters in English at OSU and is currently completing his PhD at the University of Denver where he also teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Recently, his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2002, Louisiana Literature, The Chiron Review, Hobart, American Literary Review, and other journals, anthologies, and websites. He has just completed a story collection, Backsliders, for which he is seeking a publisher.

Tina Harris, former editor of Aura, UAB's literary arts review, is currently earning a MA in creative writing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She also teaches creative writing at Birmingham's Work Release Facility for women.

Brent S. House is a native of Necaise Crossing, Mississippi, currently living in Tucson, Arizona. His poems have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Natural Bridge, and The Yalobusha Review.

Maud Newton was born in Dallas, Texas. At two, she moved to Miami, Florida, where her southern parents tried, but failed, to raise her as a lady. These days she lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York, but often returns to South Florida to pick hibiscus flowers and drink good café con leche. Her work has appeared in Eyeshot, Ducts, and elsewhere. Drop Maud a line at maud@miamistories.com.

Alison Pelegrin's chapbook Voodoo Lips was winner of the 2002 Tennessee Chapbook Prize, and her collection The Zydeco Tablets is forthcoming this fall. She is the author of another chapbook, Dancing with the One-Armed Man (Slipstream Press 1999), and she has published poems in DoubleTake, Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and New Letters. She lives in Mandeville, Louisiana, with her baby boy, Benjamin.

Ron Rash was born and raised in North Carolina, in the southern Appalachians, where his family has lived for over 250 years. Rash holds degrees from Gardner-Webb College and Clemson University, and he now lives in Clemson, South Carolina, where he teaches English at Tri-County Technical College and is a member of the MFA faculty at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina. Rash has won a General Electric Young Writers Award, an NEA Fellowship in Poetry, and has been awarded the Sherwood Anderson Prize. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals, including Poetry, Yale Review, Georgia Review, Oxford American, New England Review, Southern Review, and Shenandoah. He has published three books of poems, two books of stories, and has a novel forthcoming in the fall.

Elizabeth Routen, 21, is a native of Hampton Roads, Virginia and is the author of the recently released short story collection VOICES ON THE STAIR, from which this story is excerpted. Her writing has appeared more than forty times in publications including The Paumanok Review, The Adirondack Review, and The Newport Review, among others. She is a staff writer for Storyteller Magazine. You can visit her online at http://routen.windriverpress.com .

A native of Chattanooga, Tennessee, J. Robert Shull works for a nonprofit children's advocacy center in New York City. He holds degrees from the University of Virginia and Stanford University. This publication is his first.

Alexandra Thompson's publications include a story, "Driving Over Mozart", nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2001.

Kathrine L. Wright' s fiction and poetry is upcoming or has appeared in New Orleans Review, Weber Studies, La Petite Zine, Cenotaph, and What There Is: The Crossroads Anthology. She has a B.A. from the University of Utah and worked as an editorial assistant for Quarterly West. Kathrine is currently working on a novel (in novellas) entitled Back Space. A native Utahn who grew up camping among red rocks and sagebrush, she now resides near the Everglades.

Tommy Zurhellen's stories have appeared in Quarterly West, Carolina Quarterly, and The MacGuffin. Currently he teaches writing at the University of Alabama.

fall 2002 contributors

Jack B. Bedell was born and raised in south Louisiana. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Northwestern State University in Natchitoches before attending the University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, where he earned his M.F.A. He now teaches at Southeastern Louisiana University where he serves as Editor of Louisiana Literature. His first book, At the Bonehouse, won the 1997 Texas Review Prize, and his chapbook, What Passes for Love, was the winner of the 2000 Texas Review Chapbook Competition.

Beau Boudreaux, a New Orleans native, is currently a Professor in English at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. He is completing a book of poetry titled Trust Me.

John Bush is Associate Director and Associate Editor of the Words Work Network, a project at Web Del Sol. He is also the Director of Split Shot: A Journal of Literary Art and the former Chairperson for The Young Georgia Writers and the Writing in the Schools programs in Georgia. His poems have appeared in Conspire, 2River View, Disquieting Muses, The Best of Pif off-line and on-line, and The Paumanok Review, among others. He has poems forthcoming in Del Sol Review.

A native Texan, Gerald Duff has published six novels, among them Memphis Ribs and That's All Right, Mama: the Unauthorized Life of Elvis's Twin. His most recent, Coasters, appeared in 2001 from NewSouth Books. His fiction has won the Cohen Prize from Ploughshares Magazine, and has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award, an Edgar Allan Poe Award and an International eBook Award. He is the academic dean at McKendree College in Illinois.

Tom Foley grew up the son of american communists--an authentic "red diaper baby"--and was deeply affected by the McCarthyism of the 1950s. Growing up, he loved to sing, and that led to a degree in music and theater from the University of Minnesota. Shortly after graduation, he purchased an Argus C3 and some outdated film at a garage sale for $10, and realized that he liked taking pictures better than singing and dancing. He's been a professional photographer ever since--nearly thirty years. He makes his home in the town of his birth, Minneapolis.

Angela E. Gabriel, a Birmingham, Alabama native, is a professional screenwriter and author. In the film industry off and on for seventeen years, she began her screenwriting career doing major rewrites in 1995. Her first feature length film, "Valley of Lost Souls" was written in 1996, and from there her credits include two feature length, a documentary on WWII, and her current feature length, "When Love Steps In". Her novel, "St. Charles and the Lake People" will be completed by Christmas. She works as an Assistant Director, UPM, and in other facets of the industry. From a casting call this non-fiction piece unfolded. Angela is currently on target for Director's Guild of America status. Upcoming projects include another documentary, and two more full length films.

Elizabeth Roberts-Hamel is a third generation Floridian. She graduated from Flagler College in 1994 with a degree in English, and lived in Saint Augustine for over ten years. She currently works for the National Park Service on Florida's west coast, where she lives with her husband Ray and a cat named Potato.

Peter Huggins teaches in the English Department at Auburn University. He is the author of two collections of poems, Hard Facts (Livingston Press/University of West Alabama, 1998) and Blue Angels (River City Publishing, 2001). His novel for middle readers, In the Company of Owls, is forthcoming from NewSouth Books.

Now residing happily north of New Orleans with the tired laughing girl and three dogs, J. M. Scoville is a former tortilla baker in a Mexican foods factory, farmhand, political cartoonist, barista, puller on a shrimp boat, bookseller, busboy in a Chinese restaurant, produce manager, massage bootlegger, etc. Twice he has almost died. Once when attempting to swim across Silver Creek (whose environs suffered recently in the Sour Biscuit fire in Oregon), he was caught by an undercurrent and carried a good distance towards the rapids. The second time was when he was driving up a Fire Service road with a friend to the fire lookout tower on Bald Knob. The car fell off the mountain. Only a four-inch tree and two small boulders saved his car from falling several hundred feet. There were no other trees or rocks for fifty yards either way, keeping J. M. Scoville alive to be published in this publication. Most recently his work has appeared in the newly defunct Freudian Shrimp, with a promise of publication in the next issue of Mesechabe. He can reached at Chimmychunck@aol.com.

Julie Ann Shapiro currently lives in sunny San Diego, California, but her roots are deep in the south. She says, "I was born in Savannah, Georgia, and spent countless childhood summers chasing fireflies with my cousins, enjoying mounds of grits, and peach cobbler." Her stories have been published in BlueCollarPress.homestead.com, author-network.com, Mega Era Magazine, PacificNWpotpourri.com, Millenniumshift.com, Cenotaph, Orgease Journal http://www.alternatespecies.com, and her story "Old Woman In The Dream" will be published in a print anthology in the spring. She is presently working on a book of interconnected stories, whose central character Brad is a photographer who photographs one shoes. Julie makes a living as a marketing consultant and business writer. For more information on her marketing communications services, check out her website at http://www.gotdot.com.

Tom Sheehan, retired for 12 years, has work in or coming in The Paumanok Review, Tryst, Comrades, Literary Potpourri, Small Spiral Notebook, 3amMagazine, Eastoftheweb, Stirring, Samsara, Three Candles, Kudzu Monthly, Megaera, and Dakota House Journal, among others. He was cited with a Silver Rose Award for Excellence in the Short Story by ART (one of 12 awards out of a 1000 stories reviewed), nominated for Pushcart prize and for inclusion in The Zine Yearbook and E-2-Ink. He also won Eastoftheweb's 2002 non-fiction competition. His novel, "Vigilantes East," was recently issued by Publish America and a second one, "An Accountable Death," is serialized on 3amMagazine. He is co-editor of the sold-out issue of "A Gathering of Memories, Saugus 1900-2000," for which he and committee borrowed $60,000 to have the book printed and paid the loan off in five weeks.

Tony Tost lives in Fayettevile, Arkansas, in his fourth year of a four year MFA program at University of Arkansas. He has recently published poems in FIELD, Onthebus, Spinning Jenny, and Quarter After Eight.

Chris Tusa was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he spent his childhood. He holds a B.A and an M.A from Southeastern Louisiana University and an M.F.A. from the University of Florida, and his poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Spoon River, The Louisville Review, Tar River Poetry, The New York Quarterly, The Southeast Review, and others. With the help of a grant from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, he was able to complete his first chapbook of poems, Inventing an End, which was published in May of 2002 by Lone Willow Press. Presently, he teaches in the English Department at Louisiana State University.

winter 2003 Contributors

Tara Bray's work has been published or is forthcoming in The Southern Review, Puerto del Sol, Atlanta Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Many Mountains Moving, Green Mountains Review and Crab Orchard Review. She is in her final year at the MFA program at the University of Arkansas where she holds the Walton Fellowship in Creative Writing.

Larry O. Gay is a freelance photographer from Bessemer, Alabama. He attended Bessemer State Technical College and obtained a double major in commercial art & photography. His love for photography is parallel to his love of art, so when he photographs, he tries to shoot from an artist viewpoint.

Jayne Hunter is a writer and attorney living in North Carolina.  She has recently finished her memoir on her first year as the mother of twins, and plans to begin work on a novel in the spring of 2003.

Michael McFee has published five collections of poetry — Plain Air, Vanishing Acts, Sad Girl Sitting on a Running Board, Colander, and Earthly — and has a sixth forthcoming. He has also published two anthologies, The Language They Speak Is Things To Eat: Poems by Fifteen Contemporary North Carolina Poets (UNC Press, 1994) and This is Where We Live: New North Carolina Short Stories (UNC Press 2000). He has also collaborated with photographer Elizabeth Matheson on To See (North Carolina Wesleyan College Press, 1991). He currently teaches at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Krista McGruder's work has appeared in The Best of Carve Magzine Volume III, The North American Review and storySouth, among others. A book of short stories titled Beulah Land is forthcoming from The Toby Press in 2003. She attends the New School's fiction MFA program.

Originally from Wellington, New Zealand, Stephen Oliver occupies the most southerly latitude of any storySouth contributor in his current Sydney, Australia digs. Among his books are Henwise (1975), Autumn Songs (1978), Letter To James. K. Baxter (1980), Earthbound Mirrors (1984), Guardians, Not Angels (1993), Islands of Wilderness - A Romance (1996), Election Year Blues (1999), Unmanned (1999), and Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000. His work can be found in Ariga, Cordite, Deep South, 42Opus, Gangway, Melic Review, Snakeskin, Southern Ocean Review, Soma Literary Review, Southern Cross Review, Thylazine, Trout, Turbine, Stride, The Write Stuff, Virtual Writer, and Zuzu's Petals Quarterly.

Curtis Smith's short stories have appeared in three anthologies and over two dozen literary journals including American Literary Review, Antietam Review, Greensboro Review, Mid-American Review, Passages North, South Dakota Review, and William and Mary Review.  "At the Carnival" will appear in his upcoming collection of short-short stories In the Jukebox Light (March Street Press).  He is also the author of another collection of short-short stories Placing Ourselves Among the Living (March Street Press) and the novel An Unadorned Life (due out in late spring from Neshui Press).

Michael F. Smith studied at the Center for Writers at Southern Miss. This past May he was awarded the Henfield Prize from the Transatlantic Review Awards for a first novel excerpt. He has also published stories in several journals and reviews. This semester he will serve a fellowship at the Eur-Am Center for International Education in Pontlevoy, France.

Emily Symonds has lived in Missouri, Virginia, Alabama, and now North Carolina, where she plans to stay. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from UNC-Greensboro and a BA in English from George Mason University. Currently, she works as Editorial Assistant for Hemispheres magazine in Greensboro. Her poems have recently appeared in The Madison Review, Phoebe, and Red Rock Review.

Christopher Woods is a native Texan who writes poetry, plays, fiction and non-fiction. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Glimmer Train, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Columbia, and Rosebud. His plays have been produced in Houston, Memphis, Ft.Lauderdale, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and New York. His recent books are Heartspeak, a collection of stage monologues for actors from Stone River Press, and Under a Riverbed Sky, a collection of prose poems and brief fictions from Panther Creek Press. He has taught writing workshops in Houston at the Rice University Continuing Studies Program, and at The Women's Institute.

spring 2003 contributors

Adam Clay lives in Northwest Arkansas and is thinking about baseball. His work is forthcoming in The Styles and 88.

Kirk Curnutt is professor of English at Troy State University Montgomery in Montgomery, Alabama, where he lives with his son, Kip. He has previously published scholarly works on Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the American short story. "Down in the Flood" appears in his short-story collection, Baby, Let's Make a Baby, forthcoming from River City Publishing. Go to www.rivercitypublishing.com for more details. Kip Curnutt is finishing his sophomore year in the Booker T. Washington Magnet Arts Program in Montgomery, Alabama, where he studies photography under Mr. Andy Meadows. The flood photos that illustrate his father's story were taken on the Alabama river.

Timothy C. Davis, 31, is a staff writer at Creative Loafing, an alternative weekly in Charlotte, NC. His work has appeared (or is set to appear) in numerous national publications, including Mother Jones, No Depression, Salon.com, The Christian Science Monitor, Gastronomica and others. His fiction has been published in The Pedestal Magazine and Eclectica.

Daniel Garrett is a writer of journalism, fiction, poetry, and drama. He wrote articles on the visual artists Henry Tanner and Ed Bannister for Art & Antiques, and covered environmental justice and other environmental issues for The Audubon Activist. His book reviews have appeared in American Book Review, The Quarterly Black Review of Books, Rain Taxi, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and World Literature Today. He has published music reviews in Hyphen, Option, and on the website of Frictionmagazine.com. He edited music interviews for I/Propaganda. He wrote about Spike Lee’s films for Black Film Review and Phati’tude, and edited poetry for Changing Men. His poetry has been published by AIM/America’s Intercultural Magazine, Black American Literature Forum, The City Sun, Red River Review, The St. Mark’s Poetry Project Newsletter, UnlikelyStories.org, and a few small book anthologies. He has written a novel, Heroes and Friends, and a play, An Enemy of the President.

Matthew C. Henriksen received a B.A. in Writing from Lakeland College in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and currently is pursuing an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Arkansas. His poems have appeared in Fox Cry Review and canwehaveourballback?

Nancy Hightower has published in The New York Quarterly, Inklings Magazine, and The Presbyterian Record. She lived in Charlotte, North Carolina from 1976 to 1985 while her father worked for Jim Bakker at PTL. She is currently finishing her Ph.D. in American Literature at the University of Denver.

Clay Matthews has published in numerous pieces in Southeast Missouri State University's Journey, a number of book reviews in The Big Muddy, and gave a creative presentation at the 2002 Twentieth-Century Literature Conference.

Abraham Smith is currently an MFA student at the University of Alabama. His work has appeared or will soon appear in The American Poetry Review, The Amherst Review, Crossconnect, The Greensboro Review, New Orleans Review, and Poetry Motel. He has performed at the National Poetry Slam, the Taos Poetry Circus, and the South-by-Southwest Music Festival.

Sam Smith leads a double life these days. By day he masquerades as a corporate communication, marketing, and e-learning strategist for a small consultancy in the Denver/Boulder corridor. By night (and on weekends) he's trying to work his way back into his writing, which he more or less abandoned out of frustration over a decade ago. Sam has recently had a chapbook collection and a non-fiction piece accepted by The Dead Mule, and his poetry has also appeared in journals like Poet & Critic, The Cream City Review, The High Plains Literary Review, The New Virginia Review, and A Carolina Literary Companion.

Bob Watts is a founding co-editor of Center: A Journal of the Literary Arts, and he currently serves as Assistant Professor of English at Rhodes College in Memphis. Recent work appears, or will soon appear, in Southern Poetry Review, Pembroke and The Paris Review.

Joseph Young has poems forthcoming in The Blue Moon Review. His prose has appeared in The Mississippi Review, Opium, Literary Potpourri, and Small Spiral Notebook.

Ballad of the Confessor (the novel exerpted in this issue of storySouth) is William Zink's second novel, his first being The Hole, a satire about a modern day David who battles the Goliath of professional stadium proliferation. He is also the author of Isle of Man, a combination of short stories and poetry, Torrid Blue, a self-described book of "distilled seaside observations," and his most recent compilation of verse, Homage, which will be published in the summer of 2003.

summer 2003 contributors

C. L. Bledsoe is an MFA candidate at the University of Arkansas. He has poems forthcoming in Nimrod and 2River.

James Brock teaches creative writing and literature at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers. He has published two books of poetry, Nearly Florida (Anhinga, 2000) and The Sunshine Mine Disaster (1995). He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, the Alex Haley Foundation, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts.

Elizabeth Glixman's poems have appeared in 3 A.M. Magazine, Pig Iron Malt, Snow Monkey, and Skyline Magazine. A recent story appears in the summer issue of Outsider, Inc.

Jeremy Clive Huggins, 28, is homesick. These things--tea, 1964 Dodge Darts, late-night cigarettes, Red House Painters, birds--contribute to his homesickness. You may reach him, rebuke him, or rescue him at stufid@hotmail.com. Otherwise, take care.

Heather Duerre Humann is originally from Virginia but now resides in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where she is a student in the PhD program (English) at the University of Alabama. She also teaches English there and works as an assistant fiction editor for the literary journal Black Warrior Review.

David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University. A Johns Hopkins Ph.D., he is the recipient of five Florida State teaching awards.

Joseph D. Martin has written a number of screenplays and acted as a script consultant for independent movies produced in the Houston area. His first novel, Cactus Grove, is scheduled to be published by Neshui Press in the Fall of 2003. He has an MBA from the University of Houston and makes a living developing web applications for a national law firm.

Nathan Parker's poems have appeared in or will soon appear in Colorado Review, Taint Magazine, Can We Have Our Ball Back, Canary River Review, Adirondack Review, and others. He lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he is an MFA student at the University of Alabama. He helps edit poetry for Black Warrior Review.

Tom Sheehan has published two novels and three books of poetry. His work has appeared in numerous journals including Poor Mojo, Wild Violet, Paumanock Review, Snowbound, 3amMagazine, Splitshot, and Small Spiral Notebook. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize three times, and in 2002, he won Eastoftheweb's nonfiction competition.

Melvin Sterne was born in Georgia, raised in Louisiana and Texas, and currently makes his home in California. He earned his BA in English at the University of Washington and his MA at the University of California at Davis. His fiction has appeared (or is forthcoming) in South Carolina Review; Kaleidoscope: International Journal of Literature, Fine Arts, and Disability; Blue Mesa Review; Mochila Review; Willow Spring; In Posse Review; Amarillo-Bay; Watchword (issues Four and Five); Furrow; and Insolent Rudder. He also publishes the occasional poem and essay.

Yuri Shymanovsky says, "Born in 1962, I spent the biggest ( and greatest ) part of my life in wonderfull City of Sevastopol, known to the world for the events of Crimean War (1854-1855). This city is situated in the middle of Black Sea, at the southenest European part of the former Soviet Union. My first poem was written when I was 5 years old. Now I've realized that the poem was bad. The last poem was written last week. Well... It seems to be bad also. I'm not a poet. I wrote my first story at the age about 14 in order to entertain my friends and schoolmates. Actually, I understood that I'm writting person only in the middle of 90-th due to Internet, when I found that some of my texts became popular. The purpose of my writtings I see in propaganda of justice, sense and honor. To this day I've written alot of fiction and nonfiction stories, kids stories, translations from English to Russian, the article on music theory, etc. Last years I've found some fun in music composition. Now I live in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina."

Tony Tost is completing his MFA at the University of Arkansas. His work has appeared in the pages of Fence and Spinning Jenny. Tost also co-edits Octopus, to be launched in August.

Amy Trussell's work has been published in print in The New Orleans Review, The Savannah Literary Journal, The Dixie Phoenix, Mesechabe, Oshun Affrikan Quarterly and others. "Secret Trunk" was a finalist in the 2003 William Faulkner Literary Awards competition. As a dancer and poet, Amy Trussell has performed at Loyola Univerisity and the Spiritual Voodoo Temple in New Orleans, as well in Nashville, Florence,Atlanta, and the San Francisco Bay Area. In 1997 she founded Front Porch Records, an independent CD label featuring the music of Jake Berry from Florence, Alabama.

Fritz Ward completed his MFA at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where he served as poetry editor for the Greensboro Review. He currently coordinates special events for United Way in Sarasota, Florida. His poems have appeared in the Southern Poetry Review, Wisconsin Review, Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Clackamas Review, and other journals. His poem "Evergreen Mobile Home Park" was recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Chris Wilson lives in Charlottesville, Va., where he is the managing editor of a local daily newspaper. When he is not writing or editing, he enjoys playing the piano and the trumpet, and will speak at length, upon provocation, about the indelible link between music and writing. J.D. Salinger and Gabriel García Márquez rank at the top of his literary favorites, while Miles Davis and George Gershwin are high on his list of favorite artists and composers. This is the first story Mr. Wilson has published in storySouth.

Joe York, a native of Glencoe, Alabama, now lives in Oxford, Mississippi where he is a masters candidate in the University of Mississippi's Southern Studies Program, completing a photographic thesis on roadside Christianity.

contributors fall 2003

Melanie Carter grew up in Florida and holds an MFA in creative writing from The University of Alabama. Her poems have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Antioch Review, The Greensboro Review, and other journals. She currently teaches composition, literature, and English as a Second Language in Los Angeles.

Corey Green has published in Poetry Motel and Red Owl Magazine. He will begin an MFA at Georgia State University in the Spring.

James Foley was born and raised in Birmingham. He studied the ancient classics for six years at Jesuit colleges in Louisiana and Maryland before becoming a naval officer. He has worked as a special agent for naval intelligence in North Africa, the Middle East and southern Europe. One of his stories was awarded Honorable Mention in Toasted-Cheese's summer contest, and WriteGallery just published his story "Hoodoo Moon."

Sheila Hagler prefers to be known as a fine art print maker. Her talent and inclination drive her to capture light and images on film. She has an innate ability to compose and capture the illumination of her subjects and her photographs have been showcased in museum and collections for nearly twenty years. For more about Sheila, go to http://members.aol.com/ARTbyTOTH/Sheila.html

Elizabeth Roberts-Hamel is, among other things, a Floridian (which necessitates a certain familiarity with Spanish, large reptiles, handguns, home made guacamole and 120 degree heat). She is also an artist and a writer; this is her second story to appear in storySouth. Her first, "The Ghost Tour", earned her a nomination for the e2ink 'Best of the Web' Fiction Anthology for 2003. She currently lives in Saint Petersburg with her husband Ray and a cat named Potato.

Thorpe Moeckel's first book, Odd Botany, won the 2000 Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press and appeared in 2002. Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Field, The Antioch Review, Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, and many other journals. Raised in Georgia, Moeckel lives in Virginia and stays busy as a parent, a freelance journalist, carpenter, and working with troubled teens. Last year, he finished an MFA at University of Virginia, where he was a Hoyns and Jacob Javits Fellow.

Gene-Gabriel Moore is, among other things, a poet and playwright and the founder and producing artistic director of Not Merely Players, a professional theater of inclusion in residence at 7 Stages in Atlanta's eastvillagesque Little Five Points.

Billy Reynolds is from Huntsville, Alabama, and is currently a poetry editor for Third Coast.

Mike Perrow's poetry has appeared in Volt, Shenandoah, The Hollins Critic, Willow Springs Review, Del Sol Review, and Perihelion, as featured poet for issue #9. Perrow's poem, "Trees in My Brother's New Backyard" (Shenandoah Spring 2002) was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, 2004 edition. Perrow grew up in south central Virginia, but has lived the past decade in Massachusetts, where he is editor-in-chief of The Rational Edge.

Deborah Pope has published three books of poems, Fanatic Heart, Mortal World, and Falling Out of the Sky, all from LSU Press, as well as one volume of criticism, A Separate Vision: Isolation in Contemporary Women's Poetry (LSU, 1984). She edited the collection Ties That Bind: Essays on Mothering and Patriarchy (University of Chicago Press, 1990). Currently, she teaches at Duke University.

Steve Scafidi earned his MFA at Arizona State University and is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001). He is a cabinetmaker and lives in Summit Point, West Virginia.

j. m. scoville lives a bit down river and slightly up creek from the ruins of his wife's family's plantation, near the haunted logging railroad, where the lightning bugs signal in Morse Code, the water moccasins harmlessly coil along the banks, and cicadas' electric pulses stimulate his eardrums. There, past the longleaf pine forest, face to face with a black widow spider in Devilswood, one can easily believe in a satyr on a stump or a line of rutting armadillos as he takes in hand the spikes of a Devil's Walkingstick tree and becomes stronger by the impact. Presentingly he is writing, directing, and acting in his first film called Clearcutting the Celluloid Circus.

Mary Skaggs, a native of Oklahoma, is currently a graduate student in Creative Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma.

Susan Snively has published three books of poetry, From This Distance (Alice James, 1981), Voices in the House, (University of Alabama, 1988), and The Undertow, (University of Central Florida, 1998.) She has also published essays in The Southern Review and The Florida Review, and poems in Ploughshares, The Florida Review, Poetry East, and The Southern Poetry Review. She directs the Writing Center at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Jeff Stayton's story "Pepper" won 2002 Bondurant Prize for Short Fiction. His other work includes a novel, Silent Comedians (www.contextbooks.com). He has been an editor for The Yalobusha Review and the managing editor for a forthcoming anthology of contemporary Southern fiction and poetry entitled: Counterclockwise. He is currently working on his next novel, This Side of the River.

Louise Taylor teaches English at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was a co-author of the Prentice Hall Encyclopedia of Mathematics (1983). Articles by Professor Taylor have appeared in Tar Heel Magazine and The Christian Science Observer.

Danielle Thorne was raised in Waynesville, North Carolina, and later Tennessee. She graduated from BYU-Idaho in 1990 and then returned to the South. She has published poetry and freelance articles, both online and in print. Currently she writes poetry and short fiction from her home in Memphis, while marketing her first Appalachian children's novel, Oh, Danny Boy!

Scott Yarbrough has had short fiction recently published in The Clackamas Literary Review, In Posse Review, and The New Orleans Review, among other places; he teaches at Charleston Southern University, and lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife Leigh, his brand new baby girl Marie, and his excellent golden retriever, Sadie.

contributors winter 2004

Forrest Anderson is a native of Eastern North Carolina. He will receive his MFA from the University of South Carolina in August 2005. His fiction has appeared in the Midtown Literary Review, and his nonfiction has appeared in Yemassee, Cleave, the Cambridge Chronicle, the Rocky Mount Telegram, and the Daily Tar Heel. He's also been a contributor at the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Adam Clay lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and co-edits Typo Magazine. He has work forthcoming in Black Warrior Review and poems in Octopus, Milk, Can We Have Our Ball Back?, Three Candles, and Tarpaulin Sky.

Rebecca Cook grew up on a farm in North Georgia with her family and lots of chickens, cats, cows, and land. Now she lives in Chattanooga, TN with her husband, two sons, and two cats. Her writing, nominated for the 2002 and 2003 Pushcart Prize, has been published in many literary journals including Northwest Review, Carve, Exquisite Corpse, The New Orleans Review, and Rock Salt Plum. She is a contributing editor for Pierian Springs and co-founder of the Chattanooga Writers Guild.

Gerald Duff has published two collections of poems and six novels, including Memphis Ribs and Coasters. His fiction has been nominated for the PEN Faulkner Prize, an Edgar Allan Poe Award, and an International eBook Award. His short story Fire Ants won the Cohen Prize for the best work of fiction published in Ploughshares, and his collection of short stories titled Fire Ants will be published by NewSouth Books in 2004. He has recently completed his seventh novel Sabine.

James Everett says, "Born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi, I felt a certain loss of entertainment in my teenage years, and like others, I'm sure, I dreamt of bigger cities.  High school was drinking and parties in cow fields, abandoned lots, construction sites for new subdivisions.  Once a hay barrel was set on fire and to my recollection I never went cow tipping.   I started writing poems I'm not sure when, and left home for Davidson College on a creative writing scholarship.  In the past year or so I've worked contracted labor, managed a wine bar, taught at a community college, been a personal assistant and office task force and gardened for money.  Currently, I'm a Grisham Fellow in the M.F.A. program at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.  I live with my dog Zoe, a black mutt and reveler of mud puddles."

Larry O. Gay is a freelance photographer from Bessemer, Alabama. He attended Bessemer State Technical College and obtained a double major in commercial art & photography. His love for photography is parallel to his love of art, so when he photographs, he tries to shoot from an artist viewpoint.

Jeff Golden has a Master of Arts Degree in Professional Writing, which he received from Kennesaw State University. He is currently beginning to shop his novel manuscript, Maiden Flight, and a screenplay called, Fallen Sparrow. One of Jeff's short stories titled, "Ace," was recently published in the anthology, O' Georgia: A collection of Georgia's Newest and Most Promising Writers. Another of Jeff's short stories, "3," may be found in the Kennesaw Review online literary journal archives. Jeff founded and runs a freelance writing company in the Atlanta area, called Write FORCE, Inc. He currently lives in Woodstock, Georgia, with his wife, Cindy.

Joan Shaddox Isom's work has appeared or is forthcoming in the following publications: Nimrod, Terrain magazine, Southern Scribe, Spire Magazine, Phoenix, and others. Beacon published The Leap Years, an anthology Isom coedited, and Charlesbridge published The First Starry Night, her book for young readers.

Stephen Philpott Marstiller, born in Richmond, Virginia, and educated at St Andrews Presbyterian College is now trying to "make it" as a screenwriter in Los Angeles. His chapbook, Typewriter Umbrellas, is available through St Andrews College Press.

Kimberly Martz received her B.A. in English from Auburn University, where she received an Academy of American Poets Prize. Currently, she is working on her M.F.A. at the University of Oregon. She has had poems published in Poet Lore, The Southern Poetry Review, and Urban Spaghetti.

Corey Mesler is the owner of Burke's Book Store, in Memphis, Tennessee, one of the country's oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He has published poetry and fiction in numerous journals including Yellow Silk, Pindeldyboz, Green Egg, Black Dirt, Thema, Mars Hill Review, Poet Lore and others. He has worked in the book business all his adult life, if he has had an adult life. He has also been a book reviewer for The Memphis Commercial Appeal and The Memphis Flyer. He's been a pirate, a pauper, a puppet, a poet, a pawn and a king. A short story of his has been chosen for the 2002 edition of New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, edited by Shannon Ravenel, published by Algonquin Books. He also claims to have written the song "All Along the Watchtower." Talk, his first novel, appeared in 2002. A chapbook of poems, Chin-Chin in Eden, appeared in 2003. Most importantly, he is Toby and Chloe's dad and Cheryl's husband.

Tara Powell is the Hugh McColl Fellow in Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is a Ph.D. candidate in English.  Some of the publications in which her poetry has appeared include Asheville Poetry Review, Blue Unicorn, Cold Mountain Review, Crucible, Hidden Oak, Pembroke Magazine, South Carolina Review, and Southern Poetry Review.  She wrote a monthly column for the Raleigh News and Observer from February 2001 to August 2002, edited The Carolina Quarterly from May 2002 to August 2003, and has read her creative work by invitation at a variety of conferences.

Nate Pritts took his BS at SUNY Brockport, his MFA from Warren Wilson College and his Ph.D. from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Currently, he teaches at the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts, a residential high school for gifted students,& at Northwestern State University. His poems have recently appeared in Rattle, Cimarron Review, Solo, Dogwood and 5am.

Daniel Robbins is a graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he served as editor for the Kaleidoscope and technical writer for the IT department.  Recently, he has appeared in The Allegheny Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Aura Literary Arts Review.  He has won several awards including the Barkesdale-Maynard Poetry Award and a Hackney Literary Award for Poetry, and is currently working on a book about comic-book literature entitled In Defense of Men in Tights.

Gretchen Van Lente has published short stories in The Seattle Review, The Jacaranda Review, Rosebud, The Mangrove Review, and other places. She has won the Pen L.A. Most Promising Student Writer award and the Cornelia Ward Writing Fellowship from Syracuse University. She currently teached creative writing at Florida Gulf Coast University.

spring 2004 contributors

This presentation ©2005 storySouth.