Most of my writing is rooted in people and place. The stories I tell are my own, my family’s, my community’s, and this region’s. I try to tell them as truthfully as I’ve been equipped to tell them, always remembering our humanity and the complexities that our home presents. I write about some of the heavier topics in this life, facets of existence that are applicable well beyond our mountains, such as abuse, addiction, and poverty. But I also write about the light that cast those shadows; love, family, and faith. I don’t simply write about the tragedies that exist amongst our daily lives but the strength it takes from us individually and as a whole to get up and face each of those days.

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I’m from Estill County, Kentucky living in Berea, Kentucky now where I graduated from Berea College with a BA in Creative Writing. For the past decade I’ve also served as the college’s Appalachian Male Advocate & Mentor, a role I’ve been blessed to be in as we've built a community of young men from our mountain region leaving home to attend college just like myself at one time. I have my Master of Arts as well as my Master of Fine Arts in Writing from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.

 

My debut novel, TURKEYFOOT, was published in 2024 by Shotgun Honey Press out of Charleston, West Virginia and focuses on an Eastern Kentucky family doing everything they can to make it amidst the influx of fentanyl in Appalachia. My fiction and poetry have appeared in Limestone Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: The Journal, Heartwood Literary Magazine, The San Joaquin Review, Untelling Magazine, Troublesome Rising’s online anthology, Appalachian Journal’s As the Crow Flies series, and more.

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I am more than just a writer and an educator though; I am also a man of faith who has been blessed with two beautiful babies to love and tend to. I like to play basketball, fish, hunt ginseng, and I've even been known to do-si-do. In recent years I've learned some Spanish, chess, and how to play the mountain dulcimer. I hope we can all find these kinds of joys and vocations that remind us of what it is to be alive and well. Read closely and you'll find these pleasures amongst my work giving me and my characters the energy and hope we need to keep going.

 

I hope that you will consider joining my mailing list and give some of my work a read. My passion is to continue to tell these stories and share the lessons on writing and life that have been gifted to me with others. Thank you for visiting and if there’s anything I can help with, please feel free to reach out!

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Rick Childers

rick@rickchilders.com

606-643-3146