The Blue Mountain Review Issue 1

has been anthologized in Language Lessons (Third Man Records). Aside from poetry, Spencer plays and performs traditional Appalachian music.

Sally McRae made time stop when The Southern Collective Experience heard her perform deeply moving, impeccably delivered truth. Her poetry never held back, apologized, or sank into drama.

Since that reading, all of us lucky enough to live through her in those stanzas prayed Sally would accept our invitation. It is a solemn joy and gift that she has seen fit to give the SCE a fighting chance.

More on her personal achievements will be on our website nearing completion. To know more now, visit One Creative Choice here on Facebook. To find out more on what goes through her depthless mind, please visit: One Creative Choice.

Chani Zwibel is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and recent member of the Southern Collective Experience. She is a wife and "dog mom" who resides in Marietta, GA. When not writing, she likes to be outside, gardening or hiking.

Andy Whitehorne is a writer, poet, actor, and hellion-scholar born in the heart of Georgia. A graduate of Shorter College in Rome, Georgia, Andy has spent the years between then and today becoming a man without excuses or use for guilt. He was a member of the Collective before it was a hard fact, and currently works on a solo collection of verse along with a collaborative project with another member of the group.

About Brent Ellis: As a child, I would sit for hours on end, tracing characters, monsters, and anything I could in comic books, coloring books, and magazines. In Junior High and High school, my drawings became more elaborate: from roses, to Mickey Mouse characters, to designing album cover art for the bands I formed with my friends. In 1990, I applied to the Art Institute of Atlanta (and was accepted), but my parents informed me that they couldn’t afford to send me to the Art Institute due to the tuition. I was unable to get the scholarship.

Although I started working for the store where my Dad worked, my heart still laid in the art world. I kept my artistic abilities sharpened and created pieces as they came to me. When the economy had the small crash in the 1990’s, I fell back onto doing what I did best and created to make extra money. I designed and created several tattoos for different individuals during these years, but never had anything to do with the application of ink. Before my fate as a twenty- two year veteran of Law Enforcement, something that I never thought I’d ever do, I worked with a close friend as a roadie for his band. I met rock legends such as South Gang and Drivin’ n’ Cryin’ in the way that so many people wanted to—a nineteen-year-old’s little piece of Heaven.

Moving into a different world of crime prevention, my dreams and hopes were put on hold to further a career in Law Enforcement. I did some art on the side, but not like I wanted. Shortly after a neardeath experience during a gastric bypass surgery, I decided that I would attempt (as soon as I could) to go back to school. Although I couldn’t afford to go to the Art institute, I decided to go to school for something I loved. After being a student at Appalachian Tech for a two year period and a lot of hard work, I succeeded in accomplishing the one thing I wanted to do, but I still had a void in my life.

Using my new found talents, I created works of art with my hands. Fulfilling complete restorations of two classic muscle cars, working countless hours on my own projects and doing side jobs, I finally came up with an idea: “Big E’s Classic Car Art,” where I put muscles car and trucks on an eleven by fourteen piece of paper for the car guru to hang on his man cave wall.

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