Arlene Sanders






                                              Bio

                                 “I love these mountains and the people who live here.  
                                  Appalachia is God’s Country, and those of us who call
                                  it home are truly blessed."


    Arlene Sanders is an Appalachian Mountain writer.  A lifelong Southerner, she
     is a native of Virginia, where she lives in Blue Ridge Mountains bordering the    
     Shenandoah Valley.

                Tiger Burning Bright, her first story collection, will be published in 2008 by
                Jefferson Press in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee.

             Sanders was honored with Pushcart Prize nominations in 2006 for "Fire and Ice"
             and in 2007 for "Wish You Were Here."

     She was a Finalist in the Jefferson Press Prize for Best New Voice in Fiction for
     Tiger Burning Bright; and in Glimmer Train's Short-Story Award for New  Writers
     for the title story.  

     She won First Place for “The Arrival” in ByLine Magazine’s New -Talent Short Story  
     Contest and received Honorable Mentions in the Lorian Hemingway Short Story
     Competition for "The Arrival" and in the E. M. Koeppel Short Fiction Awards for
     "Red Roses" and "Charlie Feathers."  She was a finalist in the Future Writers-USA
     Annual Short Story Competition and won an Honorable Mention for the first chapter
     of her novel in another ByLine Magazine competition.  Her stories about life in
     Appalachia have also won other awards.

     Sanders is the single parent of three brilliant and beautiful daughters from
     Southeast Asia -- one from South Vietnam and two from South Korea. The sisters
     grew up on her farm in a hollow of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

     "The finest and most caring people I know live in Appalachia,” she says.  
     "I thought it would be a good place to raise my children -- and it was.  These
     wonderful mountain folks welcomed my daughters into their homes and taught
     them good, old-fashioned manners and country ways that will stand them in
     good stead for the rest of their lives.

     “In Blood Mountain, I try to capture some of the great humanity of the people who
     live in Appalachia. To the extent that I can do this, I’ll be happy with my novel."

             Johns Hopkins University M.A. degree candidate in fiction.  B.A. degree with
             High Honors in English, Phi Beta Kappa.

     In addition to Tiger Burning Bright, Sanders has completed other story collections,
     including The Red Dress, A Man and a Woman, and A Low Place in the Hills.

     She has fiction published in literary magazines, including Cairn, Cantaraville,
     The Dos Passos Review, The Dublin Quarterly, The Edgar Literary Magazine,
     The Georgia State University Review, Iconoclast, The MacGuffin, Mindprints,
     New Works Review, Perigee, Pindeldyboz, Sanskrit, Slow Trains, Sound  and
     Literary Art Book, Southern Hum, Sugar Mule, Taj Mahal Review, Terra Incognita,
     Tertulia Magazine, Willard & Maple, and Writers Post Journal.

     Friends describe her as a quiet woman, shy and reclusive.  Recently pressed for at
     least some personal information, she said, “If I were standing, say, on level ground,
     the top of my head would measure sixty-three inches above the dirt.  I have red hair,
     low self-esteem, an old car, and no telephone.  I have never owned a television.
     That's about it. There's nothing interesting about me."