From Harlem rooftops to the drumbeats of the Congo, the poems in "The Women and the Men display in full measure the gifts that have made Nikki Giovanni one of the most important, appealing, and broad-reaching American poets: her warmth, her conciseness, her passion, and her wit.As a witness to four generations, Nikki Giovanni has perceptively and poetically recorded her observations of both the outside world and the gentle yet enigmatic territory of the self. When her poems first emerged from the Black Rights Movement in the late 1960s, she immediately became a celebrated and controversial poet of the era. Written in one of the most commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape at the end of the twentieth century, Nikki Giovanni's poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which she is beloved and revered.http://www.nikkigiovanni.com

Michele Sons is a landscape and nature photographer, writer, and educator with a focus on the quiet, contemplative imagery of Appalachia.  She was recently New River Gorge Creative-in Residence at our nation’s newest national park, which culminated in a solo exhibit of her work and an instructional ebook available for purchase on her website.  Michele’s clients include National Geographic, The Wilderness Society, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, and various non-profits benefitting our National Parks.      http://www.michelesons.comSam Krisch is a fine art photographer known for his dramatic landscapes, wood-based photographic art pieces, and whimsical and experimental iPhone photographs. He has exhibited throughout the United States at museums, universities, art centers, and commercial galleries and his work is in numerous corporate, museum, and private collections. Solo exhibitions include the Radford University Art Museum, Virginia Tech Moss Arts Center, Allentown Art Museum, Capital One, and Academy Center of the Arts. He is the cover artist for Artemis Journal 2014.  http://www.samkrisch.com

When the great environmental writer Edward Abbey died in 1989, four friends buried him secretly in a hidden desert spot that no one would ever find. The final resting place of the Thoreau of the American West remains unknown and has become part of American folklore. In his book FINDING ABBY, Sean Prentiss goes on an odyssey looking for Abbey's grave and combines an account of his quest with a creative biography of Abbey.Sean Prentiss takes readers across the country as he gathers clues from his research, travel, and interviews with some of Abbey's closest friends. Along the way, Prentiss examines his sense of rootlessness as he unravels Abbey's complicated legacy, raising larger questions about the meaning of place and home. The result of this remarkable journey is the book, Which won the National Outdoor Book Award, the Utah Book Award for Nonfiction, and the New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. He is also a poet, published several times by Artemis Journal, Crosscut: Poems, a memoir-in-poems about his time as a trail builder in the Pacific Northwest. He also is a co-editor of two anthologies and textbooks about the creative process. Sean serves as Backcountry Magazine's poet laureate. Currently, he is an associate professor at Norwich University in Vermont.Before becoming a professor and writer, Sean worked as a trail builder in the Pacific Northwest and the Desert Southwest. Wherever he has lived, the power of stories and the power of place has been a part of his life.

Annie Waldrop is a multi-media artist living and working in Roanoke, Va. In addition to exhibiting work up and down the east coast, she recently had a major solo exhibition at The Turchin Center at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She studied at Parsons School of Design in New York City and acquired her master's degree at The Maryland Institute College of Art In Baltimore, Md. Her current focus combines various skills, including sculpture and painting, into ideas surrounding Buddhist philosophy and the  Dharma teachings.  https://anniewaldrop.net/

Betty Branch is an artist who is constantly reinventing herself. Her media is diverse; She sculpts in wax, clay, fiber, straw, and stone. Throughout her career in intensive production, she has culled visual references from ancient matriarchal civilizations to current cultural events, from Greece to the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Her work is defined by lifelong tenets: the body, rites of passage, the intersection between land and form, and the myth and form of crow and raven.  Branch’s award-winning art has been widely exhibited in the US and abroad, with works from small to monumental in private, corporate, university, and museum collections. She maintains a studio and gallery in Roanoke, VA.   www.bettybranch.com

Starroot grew up in Southern Germany and started to create art at an early age, inspired by nature and her unlimited fantasy. She explored and practiced conscious dreaming in her early childhood. She is an entirely self-taught artist. When she was 30 years old, she had a life-changing Out of Body experience in a car accident. Starroot opened more and more for visions coming to her. In 1986 she moved with her two children to Tennessee and then to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Many war books have been written the horrors of combat. All the Ruined Men explores how difficult and confusing it can be afterward to come back home. All the Ruined Men is a book of linked stories that show veterans struggling to adjust to civilian life after years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a combat veteran, and  a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division, Bill served in the Gulf War as part of the first units deployed to prevent Saddam Hussein from invading Saudi Arabia. After months of tension, He was part of the ground invasion into Iraq, charging through sand dunes littered with dead bodies."I took after my father, a Vietnam vet who never spoke about his war. Stoicism was his fortress. It became mine too. Silence served as a tolerable stopgap for a while, but once I left the Army, I had too much free time to think. Reports about scores of veteran suicides had me worried. I hadn’t considered taking my own life, but some dark vortex had me in its grip. My choices were simple: I could follow the lessons of my silent father and let my internal anger and confusion grow until they exploded, or I could try something different. So I began to write about my experiences and those of other soldiers fighting in our seemingly never-ending wars. What I learned was that words had the power to heal. And that healing could be shared—with other veterans, with their families, with anyone curious about what it’s like to go to war and come home with serious emotional baggage." Bill Glose

Donnie Secreast is co-editor of Artemis Journal and is a Ph.D. candidate in Literary Studies at Texas A&M University. She grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, originally from Radford, Virginia, with roots in Western North Carolina.Her research interests include the intersections of ecocriticism and humor in Cold War-erawomen’s writing. Her scholarship on Sylvia Plath appears in the journal Studies in the Novel,and her writing on Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring can be read in the journal InterdisciplinaryStudies in Literature and EnvironmentSylvia Plath (/plæθ/; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960) and Ariel (1965), as well as The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death by suicide in 1963.The Collected Poems were published in 1981, and Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 1982 posthumously.Secreast's scholarship on Sylvia Plath appears in the journal Studies in the Novel, and my writing on Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring can be read in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment.Links:https://muse.jhu.edu/article/750706 https://academic.oup.com/isle/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/isle/isab021/6250915?login=false

Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English, a language he has learned completely as an autodidact. His work has appeared in some 200 literary journals from 17 countries including, in the USA: Artemis, California Quarterly, Concho River Review, Italian Americana, The Lyric, North Dakota Quarterly, Philosophy And Literature, Potomac Review, Worcester Review, and World Literature Today, among about a hundred more. His fifth original collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.

A River Road Memoir is a journey through a young girl’s idyllic childhood in the rural South to her restless adolescence when the Civil Rights struggle becomes urgent and personal to her family. The unfolding story is told through the second daughter’s eyes. Jane is a serious child, the one her father calls, “a tree full of owls,” always thinking, observing, and wondering about meanings.Unresolved conflicts continue around the family table as the Civil Rights movement evolves, the Vietnam War begins, and chemical plants spring-like poison mushrooms along the river.Set in the 1950s and 1960s, the conflicts reflected in this book are hauntingly familiar to readers today as Americans continue to battle over the nation’s identity and values.JANE GOETTE, a Louisiana native, is a teacher, writer, and mother of three. Jane has volunteered with Artemis Journal and served as Associate Editor 2018-2020. She resides in Virginia.

The renowned poet, Nikki Giovanni has a new album  “The Gospel According To Nikki Giovanni.”In addition to publishing dozens of poetry works, Nikki Giovanni has recorded several spoken word albums over the course of 50 years. But this time, she’s doing something a little different.The new album,  a collaboration with saxophonist Javon Jackson, is a collection of gospel hymns and spirituals set to jazz. Growing up in the Baptist church, Giovanni says gospel music was instrumental to understanding herself as a poet.“The spirituals had a message,” she says. “They weren't just some people woke up one morning or came from working in the evening and said, ‘Oh, let's sit down and sing.’ They were sharing information with each other.”" The truth exists in the world and it is the job of the poet to pull the truth out of violentical air and place it with care upon the page to be casted from the mouth to the hearts of the people."  – Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother, Irreversible Entanglements)

Steven Kenny is a renowned painter who recently moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. He was born in Peekskill, New York in 1962 and now resides in Check, VA. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design,  After studying independently in Rome he gained notoriety as a freelance commercial illustrator, later devoting his full attention to fine art. His award-winning paintings are exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and Europe."I believe future generations will look back on the period you and I now live in and will consider [Steven Kenny] one of the leading artists emblematic of contemporary painting in the first quarter and more of the 21st Century.          - Paul Chimera, Dali historian with The Salvador Dali Society and author of the book, Dali & His Doctor: The Surreal Friendship Between Salvador Dali and Dr. Edmund KleinSteven Kenny Studioweb: www.stevenkenny.cominstagram: stevenkennyart

Angie Dribben is an Autistic artist and writer. Her debut collection, Everygirl, a finalist for the 2020 Broadkill Review Dogfish Head Prize, was released with Main Street Rag. She was a poetry contributor at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and holds an MFA from Randolph College. She is the current VP of the West Region of Poetry Society of Virginia. Her most recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Los Angeles Review, Orion, Coffin Bell, Split Rock Review, and others.Angela recently joined our team at Artemis Journal as Poet Liason to the Virginia Poetry Society.http://www.angeladribben.com

Beth Macy is an award-winning journalist & author of the 2018 New York Times-bestselling book, "Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America."She writes about outsiders and underdogs. Her writing has won over a dozen national journalism awards, including a Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard. The daughter of a factory worker mom and housepainter dad (an eighth-grade dropout), she was the first in her family to go to college.Beth was Artemis Journals' guest writer in 2015 in which we dedicated our journal to her for her courage of conviction for bringing her story of all the factory workers to life in her book, Factory Man. Her first book exposed how one furniture maker battled offshoring by China and helped save an American town here in SW Virginia. The book was a New York Times bestseller winning numerous awards. Tom Hanks brought the rights for a movie.Her second book, "Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South," debuted on the NYT Bestseller list in October 2016 and told the story of George and Willie Muse, two Black albinos who were kidnapped and sold into servitude with the circus, where they became international stars with the Ringling Brothers and other well-known circuses and sideshows of in the 1920s. Her third book "Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America" was published in 2018. Also, a New York Times Bestseller and additionally was produced by the TV channel Hulu with a limited series consisting of eight episodes based on Macy's book, in which she co-wrote and was an Executive Producer. In a follow-up to "Dopesick," Beth wrote "Finding Tess,"  an Audible podcast about a mother searching for answers in Dopesick America and narrating the book. Tess Henry was found dead in a dumpster in Las Vegas after battling her addiction to opioids. Following up with all that, Beth published an opinion piece in the Washington Post in February 2022 on how more than a million have died on the overdose crisis, and the response is shamefully inadequate. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia, with her husband Tom, her sons, and rescue mutts Mavis and Charley.https://intrepidpapergirl.com

After 30 years as a  cosmetologist, Sharon founded the “Angels with Scissors” organization, with 150 hairstylists and 43 hair salons, to enable a hair salon for the homeless at the Roanoke Rescue Mission. The organization’s goal was successful, and they raised the funds to build a hair salon inside the Mission’s Women and Children’s building, where volunteers come in to give free haircuts to the homeless.After retiring from her career in cosmetology, she began her undergraduate work in Studio Arts obtaining her degree from Hollins University in 2009 and later received a Masters of Liberal Arts in 2013. Because her maternal grandparents were Appalachian Mountain dairy farmers, she uses Appalachian themes such as quilting, storytelling, farming and gardening, and mountain landscapes as themes of her artwork.

Jack Greer has been writing for all his adult life. Much of Greer's nonfiction writing has focused on the water, especially on the Chesapeake Bay. He wrote about and got engaged in marine affairs for the University of Maryland Sea Grant College for more than thirty years. His first short story collection is Abraham's Bay & Other Stories (Dryad Press, 2009). The Montserrat Review said of the collection that "[Greer] is a wonderful storyteller and a poetic, powerful writer." Sailing magazine said, "[The stories are] haunting as we sail into cold fronts, storms, and hearts of darkness. Greer... attempts to convey what that veteran sea captain and writer Joseph Conrad says, 'Above all I want to make you see.'" The magazine Cruising World wrote: "A good book.... Grab a hot toddy and prepare for the ride."Greer's poetry has appeared in small magazines, including the online Beltway Journal, where he most recently contributed a poem to a collection honoring Langston Hughes, and our journal Artemis, which published his poem, "Flowers for Heather Heyer." His work has won acclaim for his writing and citations from the governor of Maryland & University of Maryland for his environmental work around the Chesapeake Bay. For more information;www.jackgreer.net

Donna Polsenso & Richard HensleyWelcome to our podcast. Today I will be interviewing a dynamic couple who have influenced the world of ceramics for over half a century. Donna Polseno and Richard Hensley met in graduate school and moved to Floyd, Virginia's isolated rural mountain community. Donna is our current cover artist for the 2021 Artemis Journal. Building their kiln in an old barn, they began their career attracting friends and colleagues settling in the community. This congregation of potters established a local studio art tour still thriving today, known as the 16Hands.Side-by-side, Donna Polseno and Rick Hensley have fostered a conversation as we advance about the continuum of the artistic medium of clay stretching a half a century. Currently, they have an art show at Hollins University's Eleanor Wilson Museum. This show is a testimony to the power of a pair and, when in synch, can produce a compelling collection of works and a beautiful marriage.

Cathryn Hankla is the author of over a dozen books in three genres, the most recent of which is the memoir Lost Places: On Losing and Finding Home and poetry collections Galaxies and Great Bear. Two collections are forthcoming from Mercer University Press: Not Xanadu (2022) and Immortal Stuff (2023). After a four-decade teaching career, Cathryn Hankla recently retired from her tenure home, Hollins University's Jackson Center for Creative Writing, to write, paint, and travel.Cathryn grew up in the natural environment of Southern Appalachia, with habitats that span the Blue Ridge to the Cumberland Plateau, which is one of the most biodiverse on earth. Like her native home in the Southwest Mountains of Virginia, Cathryn explores her journey through the local landscapes with incredible insights, always questing for answers, weaving an elegant, philosophical collection of essays, prose, and novels. http://www.cathrynhankla.com

"Till Death Do Us Part"2015 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public ServiceDoug Pardue was the lead reporter on a four-member team at The Post & Courier in Charleston, South Carolina that won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service, the Pulitzer's top award, for a 5-part investigative series titled "Till Death Do Us Part." The series examined why South Carolina was one of the ten deadliest states for women at the hands of men for 17 years, the entire time national records had been kept. During four of those years, the state ranked number one, the deadliest in the nation. The story stunned the state's lawmakers, prompting major improvements of state laws to better protect victims of domestic violence and punish perpetrators. Before joining the Post and Courier in 2003 as its first investigations editor, Pardue worked for USA Today, where he created that newspaper's first investigative reporting team. Prior to joining USA Today Pardue started and ran the first investigative reporting teams at the Tampa Tribune and The State in Columbia, South Carolina. Prior to that, he was a law enforcement & investigative reporter for The Roanoke Times & World-News where he and a small team of reporters were the 1990 Pulitzer Prize finalists in general news for their coverage of the year-long Pittston Coal strike.Artemis Journal evolved from writing workshops for abused women in 1977. Each year 20% of journal sales are donated to a Women's Shelter for Abused Women in Southwest Virginia.Podcast host - Jeri Rogers, Editor Artemis JournalCo-produced with Skip Brown, Final Track StudiosFestival-in-the-Park

Jeffrey W. Allison is the Paul Mellon Collection Educator and Director, Statewide Programs and Exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and played an instrumental role in designing and implementing VMFA on the Road: which was launched in 2018 and has since traveled all over the state bringing art to over 160,000 visitors.  Jeffrey was a consultant on the Discovery Channel series Ancient Origins of Native Americans and the New York Times Magazine article, Horace Bristol and the Grapes of Wrath. Awards include the 2010 John Kent Shumate Advocate of the Year. He was also a Richmond Times-Dispatch Person of the Year honoree in 2019. Jeffrey’s own photographic works are in numerous collections.  Jeffrey has acted as a technical consultant for numerous museums, art centers, and festivals, including The Chrysler Museum, Hollins University, and William King Museum of Art. Most recently, Jeffrey curated the exhibition, How Far Can Creativity Take You: VMFA Fellowship Artists.  He has worked at VMFA for more than 20 years, growing the VMFA statewide partner program from 32 to more than 1,200 partners.