Explaining the upstream Tennessee River trip at Holston River Park, the terminus. Photo by Michael Patrick
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I was born and raised in Murray, Kentucky, near the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi, of the Cumberland and the Ohio, and of the Tennessee and Ohio. Went two years to Murray State and transferred to the University of Louisville, where I got my B.A. with an English major. Like most English majors, I stayed in school. In fact, I made a career of school and used schooling as an excuse to travel the country. Got M.A./ ABD in English from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana; M.A. in journalism from the University of Wyoming, in Laramie; and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Alabama. I now teach writing at Maryville College in east Tennessee, not far from Knoxville, and once again close to the Tennessee River, this time the headwaters. My books are Paddling the Tennessee River: A Voyage on Easy Water, Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey Down the Cumberland, Liminal Zones: Where Lakes End and Rivers Begin, and Against the Current: Paddling Upstream on the Tennessee River, all published by the University of Tennessee Press. My fiction and nonfiction has been published in Gemini Magazine (my story "Neptune Society was winner of the 2017 Flash Fiction Contest), the New Madrid Review, Still: the Journal, Sou'wester, the Florida Review, Nine: a Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Distillery, Under the Sun, and the Texas Review.
That's Norman, below, who was featured in much of my writing, including Liminal Zones. I have always been accompanied by dogs on my long canoe trips. Now, I have Maggie, who canoed up the Tennessee River with me in spring 2018, the subject of my new book from UT Press: Against the Current: Paddling Upstream on the Tennessee River.
I was born and raised in Murray, Kentucky, near the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi, of the Cumberland and the Ohio, and of the Tennessee and Ohio. Went two years to Murray State and transferred to the University of Louisville, where I got my B.A. with an English major. Like most English majors, I stayed in school. In fact, I made a career of school and used schooling as an excuse to travel the country. Got M.A./ ABD in English from University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana; M.A. in journalism from the University of Wyoming, in Laramie; and an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Alabama. I now teach writing at Maryville College in east Tennessee, not far from Knoxville, and once again close to the Tennessee River, this time the headwaters. My books are Paddling the Tennessee River: A Voyage on Easy Water, Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey Down the Cumberland, Liminal Zones: Where Lakes End and Rivers Begin, and Against the Current: Paddling Upstream on the Tennessee River, all published by the University of Tennessee Press. My fiction and nonfiction has been published in Gemini Magazine (my story "Neptune Society was winner of the 2017 Flash Fiction Contest), the New Madrid Review, Still: the Journal, Sou'wester, the Florida Review, Nine: a Journal of Baseball History and Culture, Distillery, Under the Sun, and the Texas Review.
That's Norman, below, who was featured in much of my writing, including Liminal Zones. I have always been accompanied by dogs on my long canoe trips. Now, I have Maggie, who canoed up the Tennessee River with me in spring 2018, the subject of my new book from UT Press: Against the Current: Paddling Upstream on the Tennessee River.