“So, I think artists create to change the world and I embrace that. I’m unembarrassed by that ambition. That said, I don’t think writers decide where their voice lives, how their books fit, or what they mean. Readers do that. It’s always the reader who tells the writer what they’ve said.”
Steve Mitchell’s work has appeared in Passengers Journal, Harpur Palate, entropy, CRAFT Literary, december magazine, The Southeast Review, Contrary, The North Carolina Literary Review, and Flash Fiction Magazine, among others. His debut novel, Cloud Diary was published by C&R Press in 2018. Cloud Diary was short-listed for the Sir Walter Raleigh Award. His short story collection, The Naming of Ghosts, was published by Press 53 in 2013.
He’s a winner of the 2017 Curt Johnson Prose Prize, judged by Lily King, and the 2012 Lorian Hemingway International Short Story Prize and a finalist in the 2009 Fulton Prize for Short Fiction and the 2010 Ron Rash Award for Short Fiction.
He’s published journalism, criticism, and creative non-fiction in Yes!Weekly, LitSouth, and Red Fez, among others. He’s the winner of the Association of Alternative Media’s 2017 Award for Best LGBT Coverage (with Deonna Kelli Sayed) and a North Carolina Press Association award.
He’s received a Regional Artist Grant from the North Carolina Arts Council, as well as two grants to attend Creative Capital Professional Development Workshops, and a Residency Grant to the Vermont Studio Center. He’s taught writing workshops for the North Carolina Writers Network, Winston Salem Writers, and at Wildacres.
In addition to being a chef and a sort-of cowboy, Steve has worked in construction and retail, supervised a rehabilitation program for the Chronic Mentally Ill, cooked hotdogs and fish sticks at a Y Summer Camp, and taught as a substitute teacher. He’s provided environments of sound for seminars on various subjects. He’s edited a couple of books for others and the literary magazine, No Straight Roads.
He’s co-owner of Scuppernong Books, and editor at Scuppernong Editions in Greensboro, NC, where he lives with his partner, Deonna Kelli Sayed, and the cat, Mr. Zip.
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