My name is Felicia Mitchell.
I am a poet and writer who resides in rural southwestern Virginia (known far and wide as Southwest Virginia). I have lived in here since 1987 and call this place home.
I was born in 1956 in Sumter, South Carolina, to John A. and Audrey McClary Mitchell, and grew up with three brothers in rural South Carolina and on the coast of North Carolina before moving to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1966. (One brother, C. Talmadge Mitchell, writes fiction.) In Columbia, I attended A.C. Moore Elementary School, Hand Junior High School, and Booker T. Washington High School before attending the University of South Carolina (BA, 1977, and MA, 1980). After moving to Athens, Georgia, for four years, where I worked many jobs (from biscuit cook to typesetter at the now defunct Athens Observer), I moved to Austin, Texas, to attend The University of Texas at Austin for a PhD (1987). At that point, the plan was to become a scholarly professional and put the poetry aside. Fortunately, my mentor in the Ph.D. program, Dr. Ed Farrell, and my supervisor at my first job when I arrived, Albert Huffstickler, put that notion out of my head within months. In Austin, I attended Albert Huffstickler's poetry workshops and started publishing poetry and teaching workshops (Texas Union Informal Classes). Since 1987, I have served on the faculty of Emory & Henry College, teaching creative writing and English (as well as doing many administrative and service-related tasks). In 2013, I was privileged to add the James A. Davis Faculty Award given by the Emory & Henry College Alumni Association to my list of awards.
My poetry tends to explore family roots and the natural world, with inspiration being drawn from people I have known, family members I wish I had known, the medical world, my yard and trails farther afield, and archetypal myths. Poems have appeared in a number of journals over the years, including The Examined Life Journal, Hospital Drive, and Columbia. A Journal of Literature & Art. Poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, with "My Turn Out of the Box" (Referential Magazine) being named a finalist for Best of the Net in 2010. Some links to online journals are available on this website. Chapbooks include Earthenware Fertility Figure (Talent House Press, 1999) and The Cleft of the Rock (Finishing Line Press, 2009). Case Hysteries, published by Mellen in 1996 (out of print), is a short collection of dramatic monologues and dialogues based on five of Freud's case histories of women traumatized by sexual abuse. Waltzing with Horses, my first full-length collection of poems, is available from Press 53 (Winston-Salem, NC).
In addition to poetry, I have published scholarly articles, creative nonfiction, and some fiction. Her Words. Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women's Poetry (University of Tennessee Press, 2002) is a edited book of poems, critical essays, and interviews focusing on women in Appalachia. Scholarly articles on poetry have appeared in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Poets & Writers, Mid-American Review, Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Research, Theory, and Aesthetics, and elsewhere. In Athens, I wrote the occasional column or review for The Athens Observer, and other local publications. For ten years, 2003-2012, I wrote a weekly column for Washington County News. In 2015, I became a Voices columnist for Cure Today, where I share my experiences with cancer and a little advice based on my own experiences with surviving invasive ductal carcinoma and based on experiences with others in my family.
My leisure time is spent hiking, knitting, reading, enjoying my yard, and sometimes visiting others farther afield, including my son Guy Love. Guy Love, a philosophy graduate of Virginia Tech and ultra-runner who works as a physical therapy assistant in Colorado, shares awesome outdoor photographs via Instagram (handle: glovevt). A poem about a younger Guy entitled "Up From Tumbling Creek," selected by Claudia Emerson on behalf of the Poetry Society of Virginia in 2010 for a Metrorail Public Art Project, appears in the Greensboro Metro station in the Dulles Corridor in northern Virginia. "Cancerversary," a more recent poem about motherhood, and Guy, can be found in The Phoenix Soul: Reborn.
Directory Information
I am a poet and writer who resides in rural southwestern Virginia (known far and wide as Southwest Virginia). I have lived in here since 1987 and call this place home.
I was born in 1956 in Sumter, South Carolina, to John A. and Audrey McClary Mitchell, and grew up with three brothers in rural South Carolina and on the coast of North Carolina before moving to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1966. (One brother, C. Talmadge Mitchell, writes fiction.) In Columbia, I attended A.C. Moore Elementary School, Hand Junior High School, and Booker T. Washington High School before attending the University of South Carolina (BA, 1977, and MA, 1980). After moving to Athens, Georgia, for four years, where I worked many jobs (from biscuit cook to typesetter at the now defunct Athens Observer), I moved to Austin, Texas, to attend The University of Texas at Austin for a PhD (1987). At that point, the plan was to become a scholarly professional and put the poetry aside. Fortunately, my mentor in the Ph.D. program, Dr. Ed Farrell, and my supervisor at my first job when I arrived, Albert Huffstickler, put that notion out of my head within months. In Austin, I attended Albert Huffstickler's poetry workshops and started publishing poetry and teaching workshops (Texas Union Informal Classes). Since 1987, I have served on the faculty of Emory & Henry College, teaching creative writing and English (as well as doing many administrative and service-related tasks). In 2013, I was privileged to add the James A. Davis Faculty Award given by the Emory & Henry College Alumni Association to my list of awards.
My poetry tends to explore family roots and the natural world, with inspiration being drawn from people I have known, family members I wish I had known, the medical world, my yard and trails farther afield, and archetypal myths. Poems have appeared in a number of journals over the years, including The Examined Life Journal, Hospital Drive, and Columbia. A Journal of Literature & Art. Poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, with "My Turn Out of the Box" (Referential Magazine) being named a finalist for Best of the Net in 2010. Some links to online journals are available on this website. Chapbooks include Earthenware Fertility Figure (Talent House Press, 1999) and The Cleft of the Rock (Finishing Line Press, 2009). Case Hysteries, published by Mellen in 1996 (out of print), is a short collection of dramatic monologues and dialogues based on five of Freud's case histories of women traumatized by sexual abuse. Waltzing with Horses, my first full-length collection of poems, is available from Press 53 (Winston-Salem, NC).
In addition to poetry, I have published scholarly articles, creative nonfiction, and some fiction. Her Words. Diverse Voices in Contemporary Appalachian Women's Poetry (University of Tennessee Press, 2002) is a edited book of poems, critical essays, and interviews focusing on women in Appalachia. Scholarly articles on poetry have appeared in Interdisciplinary Humanities, Poets & Writers, Mid-American Review, Phoebe: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Feminist Research, Theory, and Aesthetics, and elsewhere. In Athens, I wrote the occasional column or review for The Athens Observer, and other local publications. For ten years, 2003-2012, I wrote a weekly column for Washington County News. In 2015, I became a Voices columnist for Cure Today, where I share my experiences with cancer and a little advice based on my own experiences with surviving invasive ductal carcinoma and based on experiences with others in my family.
My leisure time is spent hiking, knitting, reading, enjoying my yard, and sometimes visiting others farther afield, including my son Guy Love. Guy Love, a philosophy graduate of Virginia Tech and ultra-runner who works as a physical therapy assistant in Colorado, shares awesome outdoor photographs via Instagram (handle: glovevt). A poem about a younger Guy entitled "Up From Tumbling Creek," selected by Claudia Emerson on behalf of the Poetry Society of Virginia in 2010 for a Metrorail Public Art Project, appears in the Greensboro Metro station in the Dulles Corridor in northern Virginia. "Cancerversary," a more recent poem about motherhood, and Guy, can be found in The Phoenix Soul: Reborn.
Directory Information
- Poets & Writers Directory
This website was last updated 31 October 2018. Unless there is a credit to another photographer, all images are by Felicia Mitchell. The images in the headers are wildflowers mostly from the Virginia Creeper Trail, in this order: Blood Root, White Campion, White Trillium, Blue Aster, Spring Beauty, Dog Violets, Rue Anemone, and Dutchman's Breeches (this last one from my woods).