Charlie Hughes

Charlie G. Hughes is the co-editor of  Groundwater: Contemporary Kentucky Fiction, editor of The Kentucky Literary Newsletter, a biweekly e-mail newsletter, and author of Shifting for Myself, a volume of poems. He is also the owner of Wind Publications, a literary press with an emphasis on Kentucky and regional writers. 

Hughes grew up on a Kentucky farm. There he acquired an appreciation both for the natural world and things mechanical. Like many who came of age in the era of Sputnik, he became interested in science, both physical and natural. Always a voracious reader, often to the detriment of his assigned studies, he consumed endless volumes of science fiction, as well as sports biographies. He played on both his high school basketball and baseball teams, enthusiastically, if not skillfully. Though, as a youth, he longed to escape what he perceived as the drudgery of the farm, he often revisits that locale in both his fiction and poetry.

Hughes holds degrees from Transylvania University and the University of Kentucky.  Though employed as an analytical chemist, he has an abiding interest in the literary arts. He is the former editor of Wind, Kentucky's oldest active literary magazine. His poems and fiction have appeared in prominent literary magazines, including Kansas Quarterly, Kentucky Poetry Review, Hollins Critic, International Poetry Review, ART/LIFE, Cumberland Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, Appalachian Heritage, Cincinnati Poetry Review and others.

Comments on Hughes's book Shifting for Myself -- 

"Hughes's poems--from his experimental villanelles to his free verse and narrative forms--serve as symbol for an approach to literature . . . and life. Never brooding, rarely anxious, with an obvious twinkle in his eye, he proclaims in these poems his open love affair with the language, his joy in just the right turn of phrase, the sounds of word rubbing on word, the unexpected insight or discovery.  His delight in the art of poetry--and life--is contagious here."
                                 -- Steven R. Cope
   
"Hughes's setting are often rural and, in addition to the human cast of characters, include turtles, dogs, giant snakes, sheep and lambs, chickens and foxes. One of Hughes's greatest strengths as a poet, I think, is his ability to artfully and imaginatively enter the life and consciousness of the creatures of the world, large and small."
                                  -- Jeff Worley
   

Shifting for Myself may be purchased from your favorite local bookstore, from on-line vendors such as Amazon.com, or B&N, or you may order directly from the publisher.