Artemis Speaks

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 Hensley

Welcome 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 Service

Doug 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 Journal
Co-produced with Skip Brown, Final Track Studios
Festival-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.

Bill White Artist

Owner and artist, Bill White spent 39 years as a Professor of Painting at Hollins University in Roanoke, VA.  He has received grants from the Cabell, Mellon & Ford Foundations and in 2012 was honored with the Kendig Individual Artist award. Bill is a member of the Midwest Paint Group and has been a guest artist with the Zeuxis Gallery. He has had residencies at the Cite International des Art, Paris, France, and the Vermont Studio Center.

In 2017 Bill and his wife Linda moved to Caledonia, NY to be near family and enjoy their retirement years by opening The Village Gallery. In addition to the gallery,  Bill will offer classes and lectures throughout the year.

Uniting his own combat experience with those of other veterans, Bill Glose examines the lasting effects of battle and injuries often invisible to the naked eye.

Bill Glose is a former paratrooper and combat veteran. The author of five poetry books and two chapbooks,  Glose has been published in The Missouri Review,  Rattle, and The Sun, among others. In 2011, he was named the Daily Press Poet Laureate and in 2017 he was featured by NPR on The Writer’s Almanac. A multi-genre writer, his honors include the F. Scott Fitzgerald Short  Story Award, the Robert Bausch Fiction Award, and the  Dateline Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Bill Glose wins 2020 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award  for Postscript to War 

"This powerful collection of poetry by a veteran of the first  Gulf War, Bill Glose, manages to be violently truthful,  harshly hopeful, angry, and yet forgiving. Probably only a  combat veteran could have written anything with this  truth; but only a poet gifted with the ability to find the right  images and words could have made the ugly, fearful,  heroic truth so beautiful and moving.” 

— David Anthony Sam, former President of Germanna  Community College, author of Dark Fathers & Other  Poems and Final Inventory.

order directly from the  author (BillGlose.com for info)