Join co-producers of our Podcast, Jeri Rogers and Skip Brown, as they reflect on four years of podcasting interviews with artists and writers published in the Artemis Journal.

Getting ready to launch the next edition of Artemis Journal 24, they look at the event promoting their guest speaker, U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey.

Ana Morales is based in Roanoke, Virginia, and works primarily with mixed media. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA from James Madison University, where she studied studio art and art education. She works at LeisureMedia360 in Roanoke as the art director for publications, including the Roanoker Magazine and the Virginia Travel Guide. Morales has exhibited her work locally and nationally.

ARTIST STATEMENT

For many years, my work has primarily been informed by my life as a type 1 diabetic. I’m interested in art-making as an opportunity to play and experiment, and I think this stems from a lifetime of adhering to rules and routines for my health and well-being. Over the years, I have discovered artistic processes that mimic my daily life with diabetes—processes that explore repetition and routine, control, order, and risk. While my early work is quite literal, my more recent work explores the broader idea of illness versus wellness and the day-to-day fluctuations of my mental health.

Join the conversation with son Gary Isreal, President of the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation, and daughter Dorien Gillespie Bietz, children of Dorothy Gillespie, as they reflect on the many gifts their mother had in a groundbreaking documentary Courage, Independence and Color.

Artemis Journal was borne out of writing workshops for abused women. Ms. Gillespie donated her print celebrating Women in the Arts. The journal's mission is to support, develop, and encourage the talents of artists and writers from the Blue Ridge Mountains and beyond. Now in its 48th year, Artemis Journal looks back at its beginnings.

Jim Minick is the author or editor of eight books, including Without Warning: The Tornado of Udall, Kansas (nonfiction), Fire Is Your Water (novel), and The Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family. His work has appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Oxford American, Artemis Journal, Orion, Shenandoah, 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, the Georgia Humanities Council, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

His newest book, The Intimacy of Spoons explores the many metaphors of the spoon: from love and marriage to the spoon of a grave that holds our bodies; from the darkness of loss and night, where “the Big Dipper is nothing but / the oldest spoon pointing us home”; to the darkness of lungs transformed into art. The poems cover a wide variety of topics—cultural, political, familial, and natural—and always, underlying these poems is the song of birds—with broken wings or clear voices, avian muses filling our forests now or long gone. There are nods to Basho and Thoreau, to Eliot and Frost, Dickinson and Milton, this last, a long poem that retells the story of Adam and Eve from the point of view of Mal, the apple. Likewise, The Intimacy of Spoons shares a variety of forms, from sonnet, sestina, and villanelle to syllabics, lyrics, and a ballad. At the center of the book is the long poem, “Elegy for My Body,” which uses wordplay and contrasting voices to explore mortality, because “You can’t really do time; / it simply does us, / or undoes us, / us beings in the time being being beings / on Times Squared / waiting for the big ball to fall.” The poems of The Intimacy of Spoons return us to everyday stories and objects, common yet profound.

Sarah EK Muse, a native Virginian, is an award-winning artist, jewelry designer, and goldsmith known for her exquisite bespoke jewels that celebrate personal narratives and strengthen connections to the past, present, and future.

Serving as the backdrop for her inspirations, her private atelier, Studio 12, formerly a two-stall stable, is nestled in the picturesque Blue Ridge Mountains, where she plays with dreamy gemstones and the finest metals. You can also find her meditating in the woods or growing food in her organic garden, hanging with her chickens, or cozied up to a fire with a good book.

With over 25 years of experience making fine jewelry, Sarah’s ability to infuse soulful sentiment and style into her bespoke pieces sets her apart. She ensures that each jewel speaks directly to the heart of its wearer. Working hand in hand with her clientele, she creates a personal connection to design pieces that transcend the ordinary, weaving their story into an exceptional artistic vision and future heirloom.

https://sarahmuse.com/

Michele Evans, a fifth-generation Washingtonian (D.C.), is a poet, writer, high school English teacher, and adviser for her school's literary magazine, Unbound. Before becoming an educator, Michele Evans studied at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts; King’s College in London, England; and the Graduate School at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. This 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of The ASP Bulletin poetry contest has been published in Artemis, The Write Launch, Tangled Locks, Sky Island Journal, Maryland Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her poem "anticlea" won first place in the 2023 ASP Bulletin poetry contest sponsored by Alan Squire Publishing. purl, her debut collection of poetry, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in 2025. You can find her at www.awordsmithie.com or @awordsmithie on Instagram.


"Working in a school system is “heart” work. You keep our students at the center of every conversation, decision, and in everything you do. You know every student by name and by need and go above and beyond to provide students with what they need to succeed."
Dr. White, Roanoke City schools

Linda Atkinson is a sculptor living and working in Botetourt County. She taught art history for 21 years at Virginia Western Community College, as well as studio courses for University /Santa Cruz, Hollins College, Roanoke College, and Radford University among others. Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Atlanta. She spent 15 years in California and taught sculpture and 3-D design at the University of California/Santa Cruz. “I believe that the artist is an envoy of the human spirit whose job it is to reestablish the “enchanted” dimensions at the core of human existence—poetry, myth, passion, imagination, true love, magic, the marvelous, dreams.”

linda.atkinson111@gmail.com

A. J. Gnuse is the bestselling author of Girl in the Walls, published in 2021.

He received an MFA in fiction from UNC Wilmington, and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, Gulf Coast, Literary Hub, Los Angeles Review, and other venues.

A native of New Orleans, he lives in Texas, where he is a literary co-editor of Artemis Journal alongside his wife, Donnie Secreast.

“The novel begins as an eerie meditation on grief, family dysfunction, and things that go bump in the night. But about halfway through, Gnuse’s masterfully crafted slow burn ignites into a hair-raising thriller that is as unnerving as it is unexpected.”

- Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Girl in the Walls poses the question — how well do we really know where we live? . . . Gnuse tugs the seemingly insignificant into the spotlight and holds it there. He makes the forgotten and easily brushed-away threads of the story crystal clear while entwining a narrative of growing up and learning to live with, while not clinging to trauma. It is a story focused on the psychological without prescribing itself as such; it entertains while providing a mirror to analyze the fears that make us leave our lights on just a little bit longer each night.”
- Southern Review of Books