Join former Knoxville Writers’ Guild anthology editor and East Tennessee State University professor and poet-in-residence, Dr. Jesse Graves, for an evening of poems and conversation. Jesse will read from his own award-winning poetry and reflect on his own writing processes and how these have evolved and developed over time. He will also discuss the importance of organizations like the KWG, and the distinct moments the KWG played a crucial role in his writing life. He will also share some of his experiences about setting writing schedules and keeping commitments (plus he always brings his “travelling library” and a prompt or two to generate new creative writing).

Jesse Graves grew up in Sharps Chapel, Tennessee, where his ancestors settled in the 1780s. His first collection of poetry, Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine, was published by Texas Review Press and was reissued in a 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition. The first edition of the book received the 2011 Weatherford Award in Poetry from Berea College, two Book of the Year in Poetry awards from the Appalachian Writers’ Association, and the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, His second volume of poems, Basin Ghosts, also published by Texas Review Press, was awarded the 2014 Weatherford Award in Poetry. His third book of poems, Specter Mountain, was co-written with William Wright and published by Mercer University Press and received the 2018 Book of the Year Award in Poetry from the Appalachian Writers’ Association. Mercer published his fourth volume of poems, Merciful Days in fall of 2020, and his essay collection, Said-Songs: Essays on Poetry and Place, in 2021. Graves received the 2014 Philip H. Freund Prize for Creative Writing from Cornell University, and the 2015 James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In 2015, he was inducted into the East Tennessee Writers Hall of Fame. Graves has edited several published volumes of poetry and scholarship, including four volumes of The Southern Poetry Anthology (Contemporary Appalachia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia: Texas Review Press, Texas A&M UP Consortium), Outscape: Writings on Fences and Frontiers, for the Knoxville Writers’ Guild (2008), Jeff Daniel Marion: Poet on the Holston(University of Tennessee Press, 2016), Conversations with Robert Morgan (University Press of Mississippi, 2019), Robert Morgan: Essays on the Life and Work (McFarland, 2022), and the forthcoming volume: The Complete Poems of James Agee (University of Tennessee Press, 2024),Graves completed his MFA in Poetry Writing from Cornell University, and PhD in English from The University of Tennessee. He is Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at East Tennessee State University.