James Braziel

James Braziel's most recent book is a collection of poems written with his wife, Tina Mozelle Braziel. GLASS CABIN chronicles the thirteen years they spent building their home out of secondhand tin, tornado-snapped power poles, and church glass on a ridge in rural Alabama. Through time and sacrifice, the couple built a life with room reserved for writing — with nail and board slotted into place, a poem followed. The Braziels describe, in verse, the work of measuring cuts for stairs, of hauling water — one ton at a time — up the side of the mountain, of hammering nails, and gathering tin. It reads as a meditation on hope, on frustration, and on people’s places in the wilder parts of the world. GLass Cabin is published by Pulley Press whose mission is to highlight rural poets.

James is also the author of the story collection, THIS DITCH-WALKING LOVE, winner of the Tartt Fiction Award (Livingston Press). Ditch-Walking was inspired by the people who live on the Cumberland Plateau in Alabama. He is grateful to the Alabama Sate Council on the Arts for supporting his writing of This Ditch-Walking Love with a fellowship.

He is the author of two novels about a future environmental disaster in the Southern US — BIRMINGHAM, 35 MILES and SNAKESKIN ROAD (both with Bantam). Birmingham, 35 Miles follows a group of clay miners left behind to live in a dust bowl. Snakeskin Road follows one woman leaving this dust bowl for what she hopes is something better.

His chapbook of poems, WEATHERVANE (Finishing Line Press), meditates on the connection between family and nature.