A native of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Michael Chitwood is a writer whose poetry and fiction have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, Threepenny Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Field, and The Georgia Review. Tupelo Press published his book of poetry, Spill, in October 2007. He has five other books of poetry: From Whence (Louisiana State University Press, 2007), Gospel Road Going (Tryon Publishing Company, Incorporated, 2002), The Weave Room (University of Chicago Press, 1998), Whet (The Ohio Review, 1995) and Salt Works (Ohio Review, 1992). Gospel Road Going won the 2003 Roanoke-Chowan Prize for Poetry. Chitwood’s collection of essays, Hitting Below the Bible Belt, was published by Down Home Press in 1998, and in 2006, he published a collection of essays and short stories titled Finishing Touches (Tryon Publishing Company). He is a visiting lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  

Photo by Derek Anderson