Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Art of the Day, Hindman Settlement School, LGBTQ, Teacher of the year, Writing
“Depends. You ever consider switching to Marlboro?”
-Willie Carver
I’m grateful to have met Willie Carver a couple of years ago. I first learned of him through Twitter, back when it was Twitter and I was still on it. I knew him first as the Kentucky Teacher of the Year who was driven from his school by the hatefulness unleashed on him and his students. Then his book came out “Gay Poems for Red States” and I knew I wanted to meet him. Like so many others, he was drawn to Hindman and that is where we met. We’ve attended workshops together and I’ve come to his retreats and taken his classes. He is, indeed, a master educator. I’ve been blessed to get him to come to my school as a speaker. My students loved him, as I knew they would. Hilarious, brilliant, uncompromising, he is a lighthouse for those seeking the safety of justice, acceptance and love.
This line is from “Gas Station” a short story published in the Winter 2024 issue of Untelling: Literary and Arts magazine. Gay Poems for Red States has won a boatload of well-earned awards. I’m really looking forward to his novel coming out in the spring: Tore All to Pieces.
Please learn more about him and the good trouble he is always getting into:
https://www.kentuckypress.com/9781985903708/tore-all-to-pieces/
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: advent 2025, Art of the Day, Flood, Hindman Settlement School, Ink, Writing
“The silence after was nothing like the silence before.”
-Chelyen Davis
This line is from “Wellness Check” a chilling short story published in the 2024 winter issue of Untelling. Its ending has stuck with me a long time. That devastating silence. I met Chelyen at Hindman years ago. I don’t even know how many workshops and retreats we have attended together. Lord, the stories we’ve told and listened to late in the night on the porch or in the living room of Stuckey. We lived through that unimaginable flood there in 2022 when Troublesome Creek rose 21 feet in just a few hours in the middle of the night sweeping lives and trees and cars and homes away. It changed us all. Shared disaster turns acquaintances into kin.
Chelyen is a former journalist and speech writer for the governor of Virginia. Her work has been published in Appachian Review, Still: The Journal and The Botter Southerner, among other places. You can read three of the poems she wrote about the flood in Melissa Helton’s gorgeous anthology Troublesome Rising:
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
Filed under: 2025 Advent Tree | Tags: advent, Art of the Day, Faith, Hindman Settlement School, Hope, Ink, LGBTQ, Writing
My Advent Tree this year is dedicated to my writer friends and teachers. I am so grateful for all the light you shine in the darkness.
In the end, I decided I would never again be the scared boy in my story.
-Jonathan Corcoran
I did not know Jon or his work until I found myself in his creative nonfiction workshop at the Hindman Settlement School in the summer of 2024. His memoir No Son of Mine had just been released. I was nervous about my work that summer- I’d had a horrible year of being sicker longer than I ever experienced. I was exhausted, depressed, my resistance was very low and I just could not get well that year. That week was magical, the first time the sun came out for me in a long time. Jon is a fantastic teacher- kind, insightful and inspiring. He makes everyone feel welcome and listened to, you just want to hang out with him. His one-on-one conference with me was one of the most healing things I’ve experienced. I am profoundly grateful for his encouragement and understand, and his insight into what I might do with my disjointed creative life. His memoir is very powerful, and very important for those who experience the devastating alienation from their families because of their sexual orientation. And it is important for others to come to some understanding of just how devastating that is. His short story collection Rope Swing is a delight. He has just finished a novel that I am looking forward to very much.
https://jonathancorcoranwrites.com/
Filed under: Art of the Day | Tags: Art of the Day, blood moon eclipse, grace, winter travel
Filed under: Art of the Day | Tags: Art of the Day, New year's resolutions, procrastination
Filed under: Art of the Day | Tags: Art of the Day, New Year, Sketchbooks, Tennyson
Beginning again is something that ought to be allowed anytime of year, but perhaps there is more power when we all do it together. In celebration of the day, I have begun a new sketchbook, I’ve even made new covers for it. I love doing it for just myself alone, but somehow it is even better if there is someone else who enjoys it too. May the New Year bring us all many blessings and may we bring blessings to each other.
The Fox at Dawn 