Biography
Evan Gray lives in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. He has earned a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His first book, Thickets Swamped in Fence-Coated Briars, is out now from the Ithaca-based Garden-Door Press. Thickets is a visionary evocation of Appalachian life and labor, interweaving imagistic observation, fragmented narrative, and cultural critique. In this work, Gray draws upon his own experiences—specifically, the effects of the 2008 financial crisis upon his hometown of Jefferson, North Carolina—while also exploring Appalachian history and the politics of rural representation. The Appalachian historian Elizabeth Catte describes Gray’s debut as “a remarkable… collection written from the intimate spaces left to us within the immortal connections between land, industry, and fate. Evan Gray's poems are a guide to interior Appalachia in all of its textures and how to bear its unceasing afterlife.”
Evan currently serves as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at Appalachian State University. His poems and essays have been featured in print and online journals across the U.S. and Canada.