I did not want to be alone … so I looked for connections beyond the local.

Call it meant-to-be, fate, kismet, benign coincidence, or just plain good luck, I do not care.

Kenneth Chamlee’s work has appeared in eight Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies. His latest collection, The Best Material for the Artist in the World (Stephen F. Austin State University Press), a poetic biography of 19th-century American landscape painter Albert Bierstadt, won the 2024 Outstanding Poetry Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Ken is the author of If Not These Things (Kelsay Books) and his poems have appeared in The North Carolina Literary Review, Tar River Poetry, Cold Mountain Review, and Kakalak, among others. Ken lives in Mills River, North Carolina.