Essays & Interviews

Scratch-made Lit Conference Comes to the Smokies

Smokies Life, 2024.
A reflection on co-creating the Tremont Writers Conference and hosting Richard Powers, Frank X Walker, Janet McCue, and Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle in its first year.

A Cabin in the Woods

Permanent Vacation II (anthology), Bona Fide Books, 2018.
On living in a lovable, lively, and very moldy abode in the Smoky Mountains. 

Deer Stand

Hunting from the Academy (anthology), University of South Carolina Press, 2018.
How I learned to hunt as an adult.

Explore

Sierra, 2014
A wee piece on the joys of shepherding children into one wild corner of planet Earth.

At the End of the Road

Fourth Genre, 2010
An essay on death and dying in the natural world, an uncle’s terminal illness, and a brush with mortality.

(As with A Cabin in the Woods and Deer Stand listed above, a slightly different version of this piece also appears in my book Forest Time.)

The Good Hunter: David Petersen on the Ethics of Killing Animals for Food

The Sun, 2009
A close friend of Ed Abbey before his death in 1989, Petersen is that rare thinker capable of reaching both your earth-muffin niece and redneck cousin. 

Redneck for Wilderness: Earth First! Cofounder Dave Foreman on Being a True Conservative

The Sun, 2005.
Foreman, also a close friend of Ed Abbey, had his faults (an anti-human streak among them) possessed a vision for conservation that defied convenient political categories.

Time, Place, and a Lament for the Loss of the Chicken House:
An Interview with Southern Novelist Michael Parker

North Carolina Literary Review, 2005.

Skunked

Gray’s Sporting Journal, 2003.

Hanging at the Berry Place: 
A Visit with Wendell Berry

Oregon Extension Journal, 2000.

Radical Grace: 
An Interview with Will D. Campbell

The Sun, 2000

A white Southern Baptist preacher from Mississippi, Campbell marched with MLK, helped integrate schools in Little Rock, and later ministered to members of the Ku Klux Klan—all in keeping with an authentic biblical faith that he famously summed up in this way: 

“We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway.”

Kierkegaard Dealing Drugs:
An Interview with Filmmaker Paul Schrader

Dialogue, 1992.

Fiction

Woods in Winter

Saturday Evening Post, 2025.

While working on a longer fiction project, I took a break to spend time with a character grappling with a desire for both forgiveness and vengeance in the aftermath of his wife’s affair.

Poetry

The Harvest

Northern Appalachia Review, 2026

Cemetery Oak & Nebo Mountain

Still: The Journal, 2025.

Slipping Up

Gray’s Sporting Journal, 2025.