Phibby Venable

Bio: Phibby Venable

"Phibby lives on a branch of the Holston River in Virginia, between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Appalachian range. Her stories and poems are infused with her love for that part of the eastern United States, its scenery and history, as well as her insistence on the strength of women, the fundamental value of love and family relationships, and care for one's local community. "She elicits both excitement and amusement by allowing elements of the supernatural and the fantastic to enter her fiction...s well as entertaining us with... flights of fancy and wit, she uses them to make serious points, for example about the exploitation of women and the callous treatment of 'outsiders'. "The publication of Dry Branch Hollow and Other Stories marks the arrival of a new recruit to the select company of top-class short story writers. Many people try their hand at the difficult art of the short story; few are really successful. Phibby Venable shows us how to do it well, and she does it - as the best artists in any field do - with a deceptive appearance of ease." -from foreword by Mark P. Henderson "Phibby Venable is a respected poet who has published several book length collections... an architect of excellent prose, which is no less lyric than her poems... Dry Branch Hollow is a group of stories both serious and amusing. Some are haunting and deeply feminine; they bring to mind Anne Morrow Lindberg's tenderness and Charlotte Bronte's strength...This is delicious, funny writing, reminiscent of the late Ray Bradbury. In Dry Branch Hollow, Phibby Venable does the uncommon: she gives the best of both worlds." Kristin Roedell