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KATHRYN STRIPLING BYER |
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Currently the Poet Laureate of North Carolina, Kathryn Stripling Byer lives in Webster, North Carolina and teaches at Western Carolina University. She was born in 1944 and grew up in the southwest corner of Georgia. She attended Wesleyan College, in Macon, Georgia and later UNC Greensboro where she completed an M.F.A.. Her work is influenced by her early years growing up on the farm of her parents, C.M and Bernice Stripling and by those with whom she studied, including Fred Chappell, Robert Watson, and especially Allen Tate. Elements of both her native environment in Georgia and North Carolina and her academic experience are blended into her work which draws its thematic strength from the strong mountain identity that she foregrounds in all her writing Books of poetry published by Kathryn Byer include the following:
She has published extensively in periodicals, anthologies and online. Notably, she has written for Arts Journal, Georgia Review, Hudson Review, Crab Orchard Review, Carolina Quarterly, Iowa Review, Atlantic Monthly, Nimrod, Poetry, Southern Review, Boston Globe, Shenandoah, and is found in anthologies such as Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers, (Joyce Dyer, University Press of Kentucky, 1988), Dream Garden: The Poetic Vision of Fred Chappell (edited by Patrick Bizzaro, Louisiana State University Press, 1997). A chapbook, Wake, is recently published from Spring Street Editions, 2007. The praise for Kathryn Stripling Byers' work has been extensive. She was a winner of the Southeast Booksellers Association Award for Poetry and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Catching the Light ; recipient of the Roanoke-Chowan Poetry Prize and the Brockmoan-Campbell Award for Black Shawl ; the Lamont Prize for the best second book by and American poet was received for Wildwood Flower ; recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a North Carolina Arts Council grant. She was appointed poet-in-residence at Western Carolina University from 1988-1998 where she taught along with her husband, Jim Byer, a professor in the Department of Literature. She followed the WCU appointment with two additional postings as poet-in-residence at UNC Greensboro in 1995 and Lenoir Rhyne College in 1999. Her appointment as the Poet Laureate of North Carolina occurred in 2005. |
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Bibliography: Two by Kathryn Stripling Byer, Kathryn Stripling Byer. The English Journal, Vol. 84, No. 7 (Nov., 1995), p.68 Ward, D. S., reviewer. Wildwood Flower (Book Review). Southern Humanities Review v. 28 (Winter 1994) p105-8 Smith, Lee. "Kathryn Stripling Byer: Singing the Mountain, in Lang, John (ed. and introd.); Appalachian and Beyond: Conversations with Writers from the Mountain South. Knoxville, TN: Univ. of TN Press, 2006, pp. 293-311. McFee, Michael. 'Hear, Hear!': Kathryn Stripling Byer's 'Wide Open, These Gates' in The Napkin Manuscripts: Selected Essays and an Interview, Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2006. Kathryn Stripling Byer Issue by: Lang, John (ed. and introd.); Iron Mountain Review, 2002 Spring; 18: 2-40. Hands All Around by: Byer, Kathyrn Stripling; Georgia Review, 2001 Summer; 55 (2): 209. On the Trail to Cold Mountain by: Byer, Kathryn Stripling; Shenandoah: The Washington & Lee University Review, 1998 Spring; 48 (1): 112-17. "Turning the Windlass at the Well: Fred Chappell's Early Poetry by: Byer, Kathyrn Stripling. pp. 88-96 in: Bizzaro, Patrick (ed. and introd.); Dream Garden: The Poetic Vision of Fred Chappell. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State UP; 1997. Singing Our Hearts Away: The Poetry of Kathryn Stripling Byer by: Richman, Ann F.. pp. 38-48 in: Mitchel, Felicia (ed. and introd.); Her Words: Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women's Poetry. Knoxville, TN: U of Tennessee P; 2002. |
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Louisiana State University Press http://www.star.ac.uk/Archive/AGDabstracts/Perry.pdf |
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