Jim Minick

Jim Minick is the author or editor of eight books, including Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas (nonfiction), “The Intimacy of Spoons” (poetry), Fire Is Your Water, (novel), and The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family. Minick’s work has appeared in many publications including The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Oxford American, Orion, Shenandoah, The Sun, Conversations with Wendell Berry, Appalachian Journal, Wind, and The Sun. He serves as co-editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. Minick’s honors include the Jean Ritchie Fellowship in Appalachian Writing and the Fred Chappell Fellowship at UNC-Greensboro. Minick has also won awards from the Southern Independent Booksellers Association, Southern Environmental Law Center, The Virginia College Bookstore Association, Appalachian Writers Association, Radford University, and elsewhere. His poem “I Dream a Bean” was picked by Claudia Emerson for permanent display at the Tysons Corner/Metrorail Station. He’s garnered grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Augusta University, Georgia Humanities Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. To learn more about Jim:  jim-minick.com Interview Location: Smyth County, Virginia Jim’s Books on the Bed: The Meadow by James Galvin I Am One of You Forever by Fred Chappell Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers by Frank X Walker The Mountains Have Come Closer by Jim Wayne Miller Harper Single Volume American Literature, Third Edition Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier Matt’s gifts for Jim: The Song of Everything by Glenis Redmond The Good Lord Bird by James McBride Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams Jim's Bedside Books: Our Southern Birds by Emma Bell Miles The French Broad by Wilma Dykeman Waking by Ron Rash Divine Right’s Trip: A Novel of the Counterculture by Gurney Norman The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry Suttree by Cormac McCarthy The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje Episode timeline: 0:00 - 6:45 — Introduction 6:46 - 41:10 Matt's gifts for Jim and Jim's story 41:11 - 1:55:05 — Jim's Books on the Bed