Author Don Keith

Whenever I have the honor of presenting at a writers’ conference or meet with a group of would-be authors, I almost always get asked two questions. They are: “What do you do when you have ‘writer’s block?’” and, “How can I finish this novel I’ve been writing since Reagan was president?”

If you look at my bio, you will quickly see I am not afflicted by either problem. I’ve been fortunate to complete and have published more than forty books, fiction and non-fiction. I have self-published a half dozen and published by houses ranging from the smallest to some of the largest in the world. The works include bestsellers, flops, many that have been in print for more than two decades now, several that won major awards, and two that were adapted for the screen. Obviously, I’m not familiar with that writer’s block syndrome that infects so many authors. Nor do I squander an inordinate amount of time beginning to think about getting around to considering commencing to start and/or complete a book. I simply believe there are too many stories that need to be told for me to goof around and not get them all sewed up and delivered to people who might enjoy or be entertained, inspired, or informed by reading them.

You might say that’s all well and good, but you are not me. We are all different. You need someone to tell you how to get off the dime and finish that book. And then start the next one. And the next one after that. And let me be clear that if you write just because you enjoy the process and really have little desire or drive to be published and read by a lot of people, then this advice is not necessarily for you.

I believe in many instances, and whether it is intentional or not, writers spin their wheels because of a fear that if the book is finished and people—relatives, friends, fellow writers, potential agents or publishers—have a chance to read it, they might call their baby ugly. Fear of rejection. Bad reviews. Even jealous negativity from writers they know. They have decided nobody can hurt their feelings if the book remains “unfinished” behind a password on the computer. All I can say is, “Get tough!” You will get turned down by agents and publishers and hit square in the chops by negative reviews. Bet on it! Though I average more than 90% 4- and 5-star Amazon reviews on every book I have released, there have been a few who happily slapped a one-star put-down on my literary masterpiece. Want to know a secret? Sometimes they are right, and it helps me do an even better job on the next one. Sometimes they are so far out in left field—“Amazon delivered the book two days later than promised so I give it a single star!”—that I can happily ignore it. Besides, when 90% of purchasers are favorable toward the book, the very few who react negatively, in my very biased opinion, are the ones who are woefully out of step. Not the rest of the parade, the folks who are positive in their opinions. At any rate, please do not allow anticipated negativity to keep you from completing your book. Or from starting the next one.

As I admitted, I do not understand writer’s block. Sure, there are times when the muse on my shoulder is not quite so chatty, and it is something of a struggle to get something…anything…written. All I can say is to persevere. Write something. Anything. Now, if you still write on a legal pad with a ballpoint pen, or, like historical author Shelby Foote, use a feather quill dipped into an ink well (because, as he said, every word requires thought and precision) then it is not quite so easy to write, review, and revise. But with computer and word processor, you can always rewrite, tighten, fix, and make better anything you might type while forcing yourself to create something. Or as sometimes happens with me, I go back and read it and decide what I wrote when I was struggling to get anything committed to manuscript actually turned out to be pretty good.

Of course, there could be a reason why it seems you are casting literary seed on infertile ground. In the case of a novel, it could be that your story is not yet fully developed in your head. Maybe you get the reader lost in more backstory than is necessary, or you have far more detail than you need to tell the story, or you cover the same ground repeatedly just to make sure the reader gets what you are trying to say. Or you spend inordinate time and effort preparing to construct your yarn, outlining the story or writing detailed biographies of all the characters so you can allow yourself to “know them.” Or maybe because you do not outline or jot down a short biography for each character when it really could help keep you on track. Or you suddenly realize that the book’s structure is all sideways and you have no idea how to set it upright. Admittedly, a foundational problem is going to be tougher to push through. But if the story is worth telling and the people who populate it are worth getting to know, then I believe the best way to get back on track is to write right on through that wall of procrastination. At least for me, there have been many times when I plotted myself right into a corner. But in most cases—not always since there is a flock of wounded ducks on my computer in a folder labeled “Worthy Attempts,” fits-and-starts that I still want to try to resuscitate someday—I decided I would never get the story told if I did not find a way to make it work. Not force it to work. Find the solution for whatever goof-up had left me stranded. There is always one, of course. Maybe more than one. At least there is in real life, and the best stories reflect real life, right?

A final reason, I think, that writers cannot finish a project, or they have trouble moving forward when their creativity skedaddles, is that they are too busy WRITING to actually write. Yes, WRITING in all-caps. They forget that they should simply be telling a compelling story involving believable and fascinating characters. Maybe allow all that writing craft you’ve heard and read about—and that gets kicked around at conferences and whenever two or more authors gather—to take a back seat for at least the first couple of drafts. To be even more clear, I am talking about avoiding WRITING PRETTY at the expense of getting the story told! So many writers are convinced that they must turn out the most spectacular prose ever committed to a hard drive. Otherwise, literary agents, writing teachers, publishers, critics, and—worst of all—readers who slapped $19.95 onto their credit cards to take home or download your tome will think less of you because there were not enough clever and perfectly applied adverbs, adjectives, metaphors, similes, imagery, or foreshadowing.

All I can say is don’t worry so much about WRITING at the expense of finishing the project! Tell the story. Yes, find different and creative ways to say familiar things. But don’t go tripping all over yourself to come up with the absolutely perfect description of a sunset or a murder. Don’t get sidetracked by trying to be poetic or multi-syllabic, showing out to impress your writer friends or your sophomore-year English teacher with how brilliantly you employ all those literary devices.

Tell the story. Tell it as if you were sitting around on the deck with friends, sharing margaritas, chips and salsa. “Here’s what happened and how it happened and who it happened to.” Get it down, then go back and see if you can come up with some creative ways of polishing the narrative and making it shine like new money. Try to do it without getting tripped up by all that pretty writing, of course.

And keep writing. The rest of us want to be moved by that tale that, deep inside, you know you were born to share.

So, quit procrastinating, pass the salsa, and tell us all about the person over at the place that did that thing he or she did and was forever changed by the experience.

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Award-winning and best-selling author Don Keith is a graduate of the University of Alabama. As a broadcast journalist, he won awards from the Associated Press and United Press International for news writing and reporting and received Troy University’s Hector Award for innovation in broadcast journalism. As an on-the-air broadcaster, Don was twice named Billboard Magazine "Radio Personality of the Year."  His debut novel, The Forever Season, received the Alabama Library Association’s "Fiction of the Year" award. He has since published more than forty books, fiction and non-fiction, including several national bestsellers. One was the basis for the hit motion picture Hunter Killer, starring Gerard Butler and Gary Oldman. His biography of acclaimed African American artist Steve Skipper became the theatrical documentary feature Colors of Character.

Don lives in Indian Springs Village, Alabama, with his wife, Charlene. His email address is don@donkeith.com and his web site is www.donkeith.com.

On Sunday, November 12, over a dozen AWC members enjoyed a fascinating online workshop led by three poets, each with a unique history (and connections to History) and voice. The moderators shared their methods and their work, and several attendees also shared their work, written on the spot. Sorry you missed it? Well, weep no more, for you can watch and listen to the video here.

This first part is a personal remembrance by Chris Jones: “When I walked into my first in-person AWC Conference this September, I noticed the young lady sitting at the check-in table and I will admit my first thought was, “Oh, someone dragged their granddaughter to the conference.” I quickly abandoned that thought as I observed the “granddaughter” was actively greeting and signing in members as they arrived. That night, as the crowd departed the open mic session at another venue, I noticed Rebecca and other young people rapidly folding and stacking chairs to reset the room, and I thought, “Ah, the young folks provide muscle.” Then I actually met Rebecca on the last day of the conference, when she came up and introduced herself and congratulated me on the poem I had read the night before. I thanked her and asked whether she was a student. She said she was pursuing an MFA and that, as a contest judge, she had actually helped select my poem. I later learned that she was a board member. I finally realized: this versatile girl did anything and everything for the AWC. There were other young people present, of course, but seeing Rebecca’s level of energy and active involvement reassured me about AWC’s future.”

In late October of this year, just a few weeks after the AWC conference, AWC board member Rebecca Davis-Brown died as the result of a traffic accident. Her family and friends and colleagues were of course devastated by this loss. Much has been written about Rebecca in the usual places where a life is summarized—obituaries, mainly. Those have their place, but the AWC wanted to also remember her here, in a place that is all about two of her great loves—writing, and writers.

Rebecca was one of those essential people in the arts—those who not only pursue art themselves, but who also seek to inspire others to create and perform. A published, award-winning author herself, she was also the co-creator and editor-in-chief of a literary journal that provided a way for K-12 students to write for publication. You can see the website for that journal here.

An accomplished stage performer, she also taught dance and choreographed many stage musicals.

Rebecca was a member of the AWC board from 2022-2023. Among her accomplishments was stepping into the role of social media manager during the social media chair’s maternity leave.

Rebecca leaves behind many friends at the AWC, who will never forget her and who will forever be inspired by the memory of her absolute dedication to the arts. You can see much more detail about Rebecca’s life on this tribute wall.

Rest in Peace, Rebecca.

The AWC is proud to present “‘History’ and ‘history’: writing poems about childhood in the context of cultural changes” with Dr. Ramona Hyman, Harry Moore, and Nancy Owen Nelson. The workshop is free for members and will take place on Sunday, November 12th, beginning at 1 PM. The workshop is expected to last for 1 and 1/2 to 2 hours.

Each of the presenters of this workshop has written poems in terms of both history—their own personal growing-up years—and History—confronting the larger issues of the day. Come hear them discuss their creative process with each other and with you.

The workshop will include a panel discussion, writing exercises, and discussion.

Dr. Ramona L. Hyman is a writer, professor, and speaker “whose words are powerful memories for us to walk in the 21st century,” says Sonia Sanchez. Dr. Hyman has served as a professor for over thirty-five years. Hyman is a graduate of Temple University (BA), Andrews University (MA), and earned her PhD from the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. Dr. Joyce Joyce says, as a writer and speaker, “Hyman challenges audiences to explore a poetic imagination grounded in a feel for the southern landscape, African- American literary and political history, Black spirituality, and a creative fusion of Black folk speech with a Euro-American poetic vernacular. Dr. Ramona L.  Hyman emerges as a strong . . .intellectual poetic voice.”  Dr. Hyman is the co-editor of African American Seventh-day Adventist Healers in a Multi-cultural Nation (Pacific Press) and two collections of poetry--I Am Black America and In the Sanctuary of ‘de South. She is the author of the children’s book Grandma Annie’s Poetry. In 2022, she was included in Resonate, a collection of essays by Seventh-day Adventist Women Scholars. She is also included in the anthology Restore (November 2023), paper proceedings from the 2022 Adventist Society for Religious Studies. Presently Hyman is working on a collection of essays-- “Montgomery 55 on My Mind: Lessons from the Boycott.”  She has been awarded grants from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.  In 2022, Dr. Hyman was appointed to serve as a Governor’s appointee for the Alabama State Council on the Arts by Governor Kay Ivey. 

Dr. Hyman can be contacted at ramona.hyman@yahoo.com.

Nancy Owen Nelson earned her BA from Birmingham-Southern and her MA and PhD from Auburn University. Her poems have been published in The South Dakota Review, Graffiti Rag, What Wildness is This: Women Write About the Southwest, The MacGuffin, A Cloud of Possibility, Oberon, and This/That/Lit online journal. Published books include her memoirs, Searching for Nannie B: Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women (2015) and Divine Aphasia: A Woman’s Search for Her Father (2021); her poetry chapbook, My Heart Wears No Colors (2018); and her poetry book, Portals: A Memoir in Verse (2019). In 2019, her poem “Africatown,” was awarded second place for free verse in the Alabama Writers Conclave competition.  Her latest book, Five Points South:  Poems from an Alabama Pilgrimage, is based on a road trip she took with her late husband, Roger, in 2019. Five Points South was awarded the Book of the Year, 2022, by the Alabama State Poetry Society.  In May, 2023, Nelson moved to Florence Alabama, where she is serving as editor of Seven Points Publishing Company.

Recipient of the 2014 Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, Harry Moore is the author of the poetry collections Bearing the Farm Away (Kelsay Books, 2018) and Broken and Blended: Love’s Alchemy (Kelsay Books, 2021), along with four chapbooks: What He Would Call Them (Finishing Line Press, 2013); Time’s Fool: Love Poems (Mule on a Ferris Wheel Press, 2014); Retreat: A Way Forward (Finishing Line Press, 2017); and Beyond Paradise: The Unweeded Garden (Main Street Rag, 2020).

A third collection, We the People: Confessions of a Caucasian Southerner, is forthcoming from Broadstone Books.

His poems have appeared in Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Plainsongs, Xavier Review, Pudding Magazine, Slipstream, Main Street Rag, South Carolina Review, Blue Unicorn, Ponder Review, Anglican Theological Review, Pensive, and other journals.

Retired after teaching writing and literature for four decades in Alabama community colleges, he lives with his wife, Cassandra, in Decatur, Alabama, and serves as an assistant editor of POEM magazine. More at harryvmoore.com.

To register for this workshop, please complete the Google Form below. You will be sent login credentials before the event:

The 2023 conference celebrating AWC’s 100th year was a smashing success. Workshops, socializing, open mic, the awards banquet, the member bookstore—so much fun and writing crammed into a long weekend. Let’s build on that success in our 101st year.

Please plan to attend the AWC 2024 Conference in Orange Beach, Alabama, on September 6, 2024, through September 8, 2024.

More details will follow on the AWC website and in emails, but for now, please save the date!

AWC Members,

We are so excited about our upcoming conference, which will take place over the weekend of September 8-10, 2023 in Birmingham, Alabama.

If you haven’t registered yet, we ask that you please take the time to consider doing so. We have a great conference planned, with engaging sessions for writers working in various genres.

We’ve had a location change due to flooding at the O’Neal Library. Here is where our daily events will take place:

Friday - Birmingham Public Library - Central branch

Friday Night - Open Mic at Desert Island Supply Co. (5500 1st Ave N, Birmingham, AL 35212)

Saturday - Avenue D (3008 4th Ave. S.)

Sunday - UAB Spencer Honors House

We hope to see you this September in Birmingham!

Amos Jasper Wright IV, author of the short story collection Nobody Knows How It Got This Good, is back with a wonderful novel, Petrochemical Nocturne. It was a pleasure to be able to talk to Amos about his writing. In our conversation, we discuss the constraints of form, experimentation in literature, and, of course, his latest release:

Bradley Sides: Let’s dive right in, Amos. I am always interested in talking to authors who have written and published in shorter and in longer forms, and you’ve done just that. Do you feel like one was easier—or maybe more natural—for you to put together?

Amos Jasper Wright IV: Maybe paradoxically, in the beginning, short stories were more difficult for me, probably because of their brevity and the constraints of the form, and my first literary efforts, mercifully buried in hard drives and forgotten, were novels, or at least novelistic. Stories demand a certain authorial restraint, a process of selection and filtering, tactical precision and strategies of omission. Stories can be more like poems in this regard, finely tuned machines. Novels are more forgiving than stories, it’s easier to hide blemishes or get away with shoddy sentences in a baggy narrative of 300,000 words than it is in 8,000 words. In a story, those bad sentences will show and they will poison the surrounding text. On a purely practical level, it’s easier to edit a story, or even a collection of stories, than a novel; the totality of a story can be held whole in the mind, whereas a novel’s structure gets lost in the vastitude of it all, at least in my noggin.

As you probably noticed, I tend towards the verbose, so cranking out 300,000 words or more for a novel is a cinch, although preventing that verbal discharge from being formless is the challenge. Being succinct does not come naturally to me, and I certainly wouldn’t be the first Southern writer (whatever that means) to suffer from the prolix malady (you know who you are). Most of my stories are at least 12,000 words, and many are 20,000. I’m currently sitting on an unpublished manuscript of more than 500,000 words – stopping was the hard part. It could’ve been longer. Maybe this is logorrhea, maybe it’s a lack of discipline, maybe some stories just need half a million words to be told, but it comes naturally.

Bradley: What do you see as the relationship between your previous collection, Nobody Knows How It Got This Good, and your new novel, Petrochemical Nocturne?

Amos: Given the nature of the business, the order of publishing and the order of production do not always align in a sequential or linear way. Nobody Knows How It Got This Good was written more than a decade ago now, and there have been many unpublished projects between Nobody Knows and Petrochemical Nocturne, which may or may not ever be published, and so the delayed order of publication can create the illusion of more continuity than there really is. That said, the stories do share many of the same thematic preoccupations, such as our petrochemical culture, which is most obviously dramatized in the Deepwater Horizon story in Nobody Knows How It Got This Good. Nobody Knows was, I think, more comical too; Petrochemical Nocturne, while it has playful or funny moments, is a fundamentally darker story.

Bradley: I made several notes about how your stories and your novel both evoke place pretty heavily, specifically the American South. Is this something you think about as you begin to write or does place just kind of find its way in your work naturally?

Amos: Yes, some might say too heavily. As a Southerner, place oozes from your chromosomes, it’s in your bloodstream. But in terms of the writing process itself, or creating a place-based atmosphere, in general place isn’t something I have to think about too much, especially in the initial stages of composition. For Southern writers, a strong sense of place is our inheritance, whether you want it or not, while also avoiding the lazy tropes, or tired images of evening cicadas and moonlight on magnolias and dripping Spanish moss and all the regional stage set design, although I am probably guilty of this myself, and as it turns out, cicadas and magnolias are part of the place. However, relying on this precognitive inheritance can only take you so far. There are moments in Petrochemical Nocturne where evocations of place demand a technical knowledge of environmental systems, geological history, hydrology, organic chemistry, and other less impressionistic oozings, and the union of these – the technical and the impressionistic – is where interesting synergies take place, or so I tell myself. Lately, in an attempt to exorcise the South and test myself, purge the regional inheritance from my system, I have been working on projects, short fiction and novels, that are not set in the South, and obsess over other preoccupations, such as economics, business, and finance.  

Bradley: Another feature of your novel I made several notes regarding is how you describe the environment. I’ll pull from one of the earliest mentions. You write, “Down at the levee earlier that day, where I sometimes go to contemplate the polymorphic biographies of the river, I alone saw the petrochemical epiphenomena of things unseen: the strangely colored toxic chlorine clouds in chartreuse and dead salmon or moribund, putrid cantaloupe, the hazmat clouds merging into a coherent sentient mass of chlorine gas ghost ships sailing downriver on Fisk’s myriad Mississippis.” It’s a vivid, strong description that feels so very true and personal to me. It comes from somewhere real, right? Something you’ve seen? Read?

Amos: Almost everything in the novel, even though it is fiction, originates in experience. When I lived in Baton Rouge, walking to the levee and the Mississippi River was routine. I’d watch the tugboats maneuver and the steam clouds from the cooling towers drift over the river. Most of these florid passages are an amalgam of direct observation overlaid with some homecooked fabulism. Although I struggled with the ethics of aestheticizing this poisoned and poisonous landscape, which has ruined entire communities, maybe it was a way of salvaging something    from the ruins; and I mean ruins quite literally – you drive around parts of south Louisiana and it’s like the aftermath of an industrial experiment that has gone horribly wrong. It’s the end of the world out there on Airline Highway and River Road. In spite of our best efforts to maximize profits out of the landscape, there remain some beautiful passages up and down the river. But as Greek myth teaches, the beautiful and the poisonous are not mutually exclusive categories. Despite the photos accompanying the text, this is not an empirical report.

Bradley: This is maybe an odd kind of question, but do you see the environment as being a character in Petrochemical Nocturne?

Amos: The environment in the South, and especially south Louisiana, is very much a character. It has personality, attitude, moods and mood swings, it can be violent and/or beautiful, it can be sad and melancholy, or exultant and jubilant. If not treated with respect, the environment will destroy you. In Petrochemical Nocturne the environment is a sort of totalizing Leviathan. In one sense, the environment overwhelms the characters, obliterates them, a story as old as time, to be found in the Old Testament or the Odyssey. The difference is that there were no petrochemical plants in those days. Although I am reluctant to frame this as a binary battle between man and environment, in which the environment always wins, in this case, the story is about how man’s character, as a species that irreparably alters and degrades the environment down to the molecular level, has turned the environment against him, and in some ways that makes us a homeless animal. Landscapes like Cancer Alley are largely synthetic, manmade reflections of our values and worldview. These petrochemical monsters are products of the human mind – what does that tell us about ourselves? What kind of animal does it take to look at a river and say, “You know what this river needs – a petrochemical plant!”

Bradley: I really admire experimentation with literary forms. Here, in Petrochemical Nocturne, you use several visual images to give your narrative added layers. For example, there are photos, paintings, and maps. Will you talk a bit about why you included these images—what they give the work?

Amos: I’ve long had an interest in the visual arts, and at one time dabbled in painting, and wanted to be a sculptor. Maybe the use of these visual aids is the flailing nostalgia of a failed artist. As far as the maps are concerned, I’ve also had an interest in historical cartography, and regularly use mapping and GIS in my professional W-2 work. The novel’s Toxmap, for example, was an actual mapping tool that I used at work. I considered making some of my own maps, but decided that the novel required the real thing. Hopefully without using these visuals as a crutch, the photos and maps lend the narrative a documentary veneer, fictionalized events and lives corroborated with historical records such census data or battlefield photography. There’s a strange and eerie quality to some of the novel’s otherwise traumatic photos. Conversely, the historical record and the bygone events documented in the photos are given flesh and blood in the contemporary characters. In our world of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” they complexify the fictional narrative, reminders that while the narrator and Toussaint may be fictional, Whipper Peter was a real man, his absent tormentors implied by the scars on his back.

Bradley: Before I let you go, I want to briefly ask about the historical elements inside your book. Did you find the inclusion of these to ever be limiting in how far the “fiction” could go? Or did the foundation in history—and people and events of history—help the novel find its way?

Amos: That’s a valid point. I never experienced them as constraints, though that does not mean that they’re not constraining. Without that historical ballast, it’s possible my maximalist storytelling mode would send the narrative into deep space. Constraints can be liberating, the historical armature provides some structure and grounding. Given my thematic preoccupations, I don’t know how you set a novel in a historically fraught place like south Louisiana and ignore the local history; not that you have to write a narrative as saturated in it as Petrochemical Nocturne, but some level of acknowledgment seems in order. To your point, my more recent writing projects have more or less dispensed with this historical mode, at the same time that I’ve been exorcising the South from my repertoire, at least for now. I’m sure the South will eventually return to haunt me again.  

Bradley: Thank you for your time, Amos. You’ve written a timely and thoughtful book, and I enjoyed being able to spend time with it.    

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Amos Jasper Wright IV is from Alabama. His first short story collection, Nobody Knows How It Got This Good, was published by Livingston Press (University of West Alabama) and his first novel, Petrochemical Nocturne, was published in 2023 by Livingston Press. He recently completed several as yet unpublished books - The Battle of Danziger Bridge, In the Land of the Blind, and The Empire of Repetitive Motions - and is currently working on a novel about the 2007-2008 financial crisis and retail stock trading. 

Once upon a time there was a man who looked like Santa Claus on a diet. He was mostly jolly

and “lived” in the downtown of a Magic City inside a magical bookstore that was way more

than a bookstore.

Okay, he didn’t actually “live” in the store, but it was definitely “home” for many years. The

man loved books so much that he not only collected them (along with a stupendous assortment

of stuff memorabilia), he also wrote them. Sometimes words came to him all at once out of

nowhere, and he hastily jotted them down or recorded them if driving. Sometimes they were

odd words. Sometimes profound. Sometimes funny. And thus was born his latest book, What I

Said.

Much is packed into this 373-page pocketbook of diverse, standalone thoughts. Each one gets

its own page. But all is not chaos. There are themes.

Signs:

“The shop sign reads: THE UNIFORM PEOPLE

What—are they clones?”

Fortune-telling:

“You will meet a tall, dark stranger.

He will ignore you.”

Ponderable:

“Where do unspoken words hang out?”

“What is it I know that I have yet to learn?”

“No island is a man.”

Art Commentary:

Bad art is necessary

in order to have good art.

Profound:

“I can’t do everything at once. I can’t even do one thing at once.”

“It was a dark and stormy night.

But then, that sometimes happens.”

Punny:

“The ghoulish neighbor each year

Planted his creep myrtles.”

(One example is enough, yes?)

And many odd jewels:

“My greatest hope is that Science

will find Cheese Curls to be

a sure path to a healthy life.”

And my personal favorite:

“You can’t have too many lava lamps.”

Where can you find a book written by Santa Claus Jim Reed, owner of Reed Books in

downtown Birmingham, Alabama? Why, at that very store and at abebooks.com.

Note: No consideration was given for this review other than a copy of the said book. It was my

privilege and pleasure to read it and recommend it.

Jim Reed is an octogenarian dabbler is words and ideas. He resides in Birmingham, Alabama,

and is known as “Poppy” to his offspring and their offspring and their offspring. In his spare

time Jim writes and performs stories—both actual and true—and owns Reed Books/The

Museum of Fond Memories/The Library of Thought. He is also the editor of Birmingham Arts

Journal. His muses are editor/publisher/spouse Liz Reed and author/poet/friend Irene Latham.

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T.K. Thorne is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction. She writes about what moves

her, following the flight path of curiosity, reflection, and imagination.

The AWC is proud to present “Tripping Down Memory Lane” with Dr. Kim Shackelford. The workshop is free for members and will take place on Saturday, July 22nd, beginning at 10 AM. “Tripping Down Memory Lane” is expected to last for two hours.

Here is the official description of the workshop:

“We all have stories. My career has been in social work. It is understandable that I love to hear the stories of others. As a professor, my students have often said they learned more from my stories in the classroom than the textbook. I do love to tell stories! My new path is to capture my stories by writing short essays, memoirs, and poetry.

Please join me in looking at the elements of writing about your memories. We will be telling and writing about the important memories that you hold within you but need to be shared. I have recently published a collection of memories with two good friends and writers, and started Beach Bards Publishing, LLC in Gulf Shores, AL. You can learn about this at beachbardspublishingllc.com and ACT II: Footprints in Gulf shores is available on Amazon.”

Dr. Kimberly K. Shackelford, LCSW, is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Auburn University. She has a BS from Iowa State University, an MSW from the University of Southern Mississippi and a Ph.D. in Higher Education and Leadership from the University of Mississippi. Dr. Shackelford’s career has included retiring from Mississippi Department of Human Services – Division of Family and Children’s Services as Deputy Director and achieving full professorship at the University of Mississippi with many years in the fields of child welfare and child advocacy.

Dr. Shackelford is a co-author of two books with Dr. Josephine Pryce and Col. David Pryce – Secondary Traumatic Stress and the Child Welfare Professional and The Costs of Courage: Combat Stress, Warriors, and Family Survival. Her research areas are traumatic stress, service-learning in international community development, child welfare supervision, and social justice with publications in the Journal of Policy Practice and Research, Child Welfare Journal, Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, The International Journal of Continuing Social Work Education: Professional Development, among others. Dr. Shackelford has written child welfare training curriculum for many states along with Belize, Cape Town, South Africa, and Ontario, Canada.

Dr. Shackelford has recently co-authored ACT II: Footprints in Gulf Shores A Collection of Stories, Memoirs, and Poetry with Nancy Lawler Dickhute and Heidi Lyght-Schmidt. She is co-owner, along with Nancy and Heidi, of Beach Bards Publishing, LLC.

She has had two memoir short stories published in the Birmingham Arts Journal: The Mess Vol. 16 Issue 2, and Alarming Inspiration Vol. 16 Issue 4. She is a board member of the Alabama Writers’ Cooperative and a member of the Alabama State Poetry Society.  

To register for Dr. Shackelford’s workshop, please complete the Google Form below. You will be sent login credentials before the event: