About Kathy Rhodes

Kathy Rhodes is author of two books of creative nonfiction and contributing editor of two books. She has completed a novel set in a fictional town in her home county in the Mississippi Delta.

Her essay “Pushing Up the Sun” was included in the anthology A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We Are Meant to Be, published by Mercer Press, 2017. Her essay “An Open Letter” appeared in The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 3 (W.W. Norton & Company, 2009) and was singled out for a review in The New Yorker. Her essay “The Wedding Hankie” was included in Chocolate for a Woman’s Soul II (Simon & Schuster, 2003). Her works have been published in magazines, newspapers, and six anthologies.

BOOKS:

– Remember the Dragonflies: A Memoir of Grief and Healing, WestBow Press, 2013
– Pink Butterbeans: Stories from the heart of a Southern woman, Cold Tree Press, 2005
– Gathering: Writers of Williamson County, CPO Press, 2009
– Muscadine Lines: A Southern Anthology, Cold Tree Press, 2006

Kathy Rhodes; Susan Cushman, editor; River Jordan
Barnes and Noble Book Signing, May 2017

Rhodes is Senior Writer/Editor at TurnStyle Writing, Editing & Publishing Solutions. (turnstylewriters.com) TurnStyle offers editing and proofreading services, private coaching sessions for writers, and writing workshops at local venues.

She is a member of Harpeth River Writers, the Nashville Writers Council, and Writers in CAPS.

Rhodes teaches creative nonfiction workshops, has presented at regional and state conferences, and has served on festival panels, including:
– Alabama Writers Conclave (Birmingham, AL, 2010 and Huntsville, AL, 2012)
– Southern Literary Festival (Nashville TN)
– Writers Loft of Middle Tennessee State University (Murfreesboro TN)
– Creative Nonfiction at the Crossroads (Clarksdale, MS; director and presenter)
– Southern Festival of Books (Nashville TN; panelist in 2006, 2009, and 2014)
– Southern Kentucky Book Fest (Bowling Green KY)
– Mississippi Delta Literary Festival (Greenville MS)
– Council for the Written Word (Franklin TN)

For eight years Rhodes was Publisher/Editor of the e-zine Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal, ISSN 1554-8449. MLASJ published the works of 361 emerging and established writers in 38 states and ten countries, including Pushcart winners, nationally known journalists, and an excerpt from the second novel of the late Doug Marlette.

Rhodes was co-director of the national Oxford Creative Nonfiction Conference (Oxford, MS, 2010 and 2013). She was an officer and on the Board of Directors for her former county and state literary organizations. She was also a part-time program instructor for Williamson County, Tennessee, Parks and Recreation, teaching writing classes on the Franklin campus from 2010-2016.

A former English teacher, Rhodes earned a BA in English and Education at Delta State University, where she was a President’s List scholar and winner of the Annie Caulfield Winston Writing Award, and then did graduate studies in professional writing at the University of Memphis. She currently lives in the Nashville, Tennessee, area, where she gardens, kayaks, writes, reads, and enjoys walks and hikes with her buff merle cocker spaniel, Heidi Deering.

 

2014 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville
Panel for Remember the Dragonflies

Book Signing, Remember the Dragonflies, Barnes & Noble, Brentwood, TN, February 2014

Franklin Book Festival 2019; L to R Kathy Rhodes, Susie Dunham, Dr. Par Donahue, Dr. Sally Burbank, Bill Peach