In a November 2022 interview with The Smoky Mountain News, storied writer Fred Chappell, a Haywood County native who was 86 at the time, was asked what the culmination of his life meant to him looking back. 

I love the energy surrounding a new year. Why are beginnings so enchanting? Perhaps it’s the hope and anticipation of the unknown or maybe an open opportunity to shed old habits, behaviors and beliefs that are no longer serving us.

In a recent online search, I came across “Good Riddance, But Now What?” by that master of light verse, Ogden Nash: 

The day before my June getaway to the beach ended, I developed a bad case of bookshop lust.

Somehow in the last couple years scanning the stacks and shelves of our local library and indie bookstore, I missed seeing an important book focused on and designed for the times we are living in. “Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth” (The Golden Sufi Center Publishing, 309 pages, 2021), edited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, is a compendium of essays and poems addressing all the requisite issues that the word “ecology” implies. 

As it has been stated in this publication many times before, the litmus test of the strength of a community is by how strongly its arts is supported.

In conversation, Fred Chappell is a man of few words and sentiments. Perhaps that’s because he uses all of his vocabulary and emotions to spill across the blank page. 

Wilma Mankiller was the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation from 1985 to 1995. She was an activist for many Native American and progressive social causes and programs throughout her adult life and was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

“Crowded By Beauty” (University of California Press, 2015) is the poetic title of the most recent biography of Philip Whalen. Who was Philip Whalen? As the author David Schneider describes him:

During the pandemic, regional authors have been busy. I’ve been made aware of several books being released this year by writers in our own back yard who have published books in several genres.