Artemis Speaks

Susan Hankla Poet has s long history with Artemis. Back in 1977, as a young writer, Susan's poetry appeared in the very first edition of Artemis Journal . VA. For many years she worked as a traveling poet-in-the-schools working with underserved communities in Virginia, through generous grants from The Virginia Commission on the Arts. This made her love of teaching creative writing grow into r...

Update: 12/10/24 The Artemis community shares the deep sorrow of losing our cherished poet, Nikki Giovanni. She passed on the evening of Dec. 9, 2024. For ten years, she served as our Distinguished Poet on the Board, and her contributions were invaluable to the heart of our poetry journal. We feel this loss deeply and will carry her spirit and legacy with us as we move forward. She will always be...

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 Wil...

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...

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 Baltimor...

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,...

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 mov...

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...

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-era women’s writing. Her scholarship on Sylvia Plath appears in the journal...

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...

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. Unresolve...

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...

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...

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 forthc...

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...

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 sai...

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 h...

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 bar...

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, Holli...

"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 Car...

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 Ori...

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 In...

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 L...

Donna Polseno is a sculptor and potter living in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Donna will be featured on our next 2021 Artemis cover to be released in June.  She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and has been honored with 2 NEA Artist Fellowships and a Virginia Museum Artists Grant. Donna has shown her work in major exhibitions in museums and galleries, nationally and interna...

                        Winner of "Women Hold Up Half the Sky" SciFi Contest                                             "Never turn your back on water"                                                           by Courtney Watson Partnering with Los Angeles Light Bringer Project, Artemis encourages SciFi short story writing with a strong female leading character. Courtney Watso...