Jim Minick is the author of The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family, winner of the SIBA Best Nonfiction Book of the Year Award. Minick has also written a collection of essays, Finding a Clear Path, two books of poetry, Her Secret Song and Burning Heaven, and he edited All There Is to Keep by Rita Riddle. The Virginia College Bookstore Association awarded Burning Heaven the Jefferson Cup for best book of the year for 2008. Minick has won grants, awards, and honors from the Southern Independent Booksellers Association, Southern Environmental Law Center, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Virginia Commission for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Appalachian Writers Association, Appalachian Heritage, Now and Then Magazine, Radford University, and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. His poem “I Dream a Bean” was picked by Claudia Emerson for permanent display at the Tysons Corner/Metrorail Station. He’s also garnered grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Minick’s work has appeared in many publications including Shenandoah, Oxford American, Orion, San Francisco Chronicle, Encyclopedia of Appalachia, Conversations with Wendell Berry, The Sun, Appalachian Journal, Bay Journal News, Wind, and The Roanoke Times. He completed an MFA in fiction from UNC-Greensboro, where he was The Fred Chappell Fellow and Fiction Editor for The Greensboro Review. Currently, he is Assistant Professor of English at Georgia Regents University and on the Core Faculty in Converse College’s low-residency MFA program.
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