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