A native Alabamian, Thomas Alan Holmes spent many years on the staff and masthead of The Black Warrior Review while completing his graduate degrees at the University of Alabama. He is co-editor of Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and American Culture (with Roxanne Harde, Lexington Books, 2013), Jeff Daniel Marion: Poet on the Holston (with Jesse Graves and Ernest Lee, University of Tennessee Press, 2015), and The Fire That Breaks: Gerard Manley Hopkins’s Poetic Legacies (with Daniel Westover, Clemson University Press, 2020). His research and creative work have appeared in such journals as Louisiana Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Connecticut Review, Appalachian Heritage, Blue Mesa Review, Still: The Journal, and Appalachian Journal. He specializes in Appalachian and African American literature as a professor of English at East Tennessee State University. His author photo is by Michelle Joy Handler and is used with permission from her family.
