Fred First
Critical Description of Work:
When I think about writing I think about reading: the first word we learned from Dick and Jane was LOOK! My words are almost all wielded as a way to make myself (and possibly a few readers) hold the ordinary things and events of life up to closer scrutiny with the pervasive assumption that there is far more to the subject that appears on the surface. Look! I often write to bring the story from one of my digital images, or conversely, hope to create images in words for those I haven't captured with my camera. Much of what I want to wring from writing is how place impacts our being and thinking and how we in turn impact the places we live. Consequently, I think of myself as a hyper-local folk writer holding the universal always in peripheral vision.
Contact Me:
Phone:
Email: fred1st@gmail.com
Website:
http://fragmentsfromfloyd.com
Address:
Fred First
1020 Goose Creek Run N.E.
Check, VA 24072
Biography:
Since his earliest years in Birmingham, Alabama, Fred First has called several places home, and all of them have been in the southern Appalachians. An Auburn graduate with a MS in Zoology and an avid naturalist, he first moved to Virginia in 1975 to teach biology at Wytheville Community College.
In a mid-life career change, he earned a masters degree in Physical Therapy and practiced in that field in North Carolina for six years before moving—perma-nently, he says—to Floyd County in 1997. In 2002, his personal focus shifted from what he did for a living to where it was that he lived.
He con-tinues to explore the beauties and perplexities of his rural Blue Ridge valley in words and images, including a daily photo-journal called Fragments from Floyd. Much of his writing and pondering turns to sense of place and belonging, especially as they relate to the Southern Mountains. His current book in progress is a full color book that deals with the "nature gap" and hopes to move parents and other adults to get children engaged with nature in meaningful ways.
Fred is active in his Floyd County community, penning the Road Less Traveled column biweekly for the Floyd Press and another for the new Star-Sentinel in Roanoke. He has served as member of the board at the Jacksonville Center, Floyd’s Center for the Arts. He has spoken in various academic and civic settings at Virginia Tech and Radford University (where he has been adjunct faculty since August 2004). Since the publishing of Slow Road Home, he finds opportunities to speak from and about the book and about writing and nature in libraries, book stores, and for civic organizations including Rotary International, Kiwanis, Lions and the Sierra Club. He has recently recorded his book for Radio Readers service for the visually impaired at the Roanoke NPR station, WVTF, where he is a regular essay contributor.
Nantahala Review / December 2004? / On Eagle Wings
Co-founder of Ecotone: Where Writers Write about Place 2002-2004
Weblog Fragments from Floyd May 2002 to present, frequent nature topics, on 020808 ranked #15 at http://natureblognetwork.com/
"Our Place in the World: A Visual Essay" presentation Audubon, Sierra Club, Kiwanis, Forest Watch of VA etc
Numerous nature-environment related essays on Roanoke NPR WVTF 2002-2007 and in regular biweekly column Road Less Traveled for Floyd Press, Floyd County, Virginia Dec 2004 to present.
Books & Essays
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Slow Road Home: a Blue Ridge Book of Days a "memoir of place"
Published: Goose Creek Press 2006
Some of us long for belonging to the land, for roots in particular and special places where, for reasons usually beyond our knowing, we resonate with the landscape. For those who have lived other places only to discover home in the Blue Ridge Mountains, there is a mystery and allure that draws them there. This pull First describes as a "magnetic resonance in our bones that pulls us toward an altitude, latitude and slant of sun that simply feels right for us like no place else." For such souls "the mountains hold a nutrient that we can not live without." At fifty four, the author left his profession in healthcare to explore where it was that he lived; for a time, this became what he did for a living. The daily discipline of intentional immersion in small wonders close at hand ultimately grew to become the story of the book, a celebration of one special mountain place that seems to have been waiting all his life for the author to find, to know and to share. Slow Road Home ~ a Blue Ridge Book of Days was published by Goose Creek Press in April, 2006. The author's background as naturalist, teacher and photographer inform this collection of more than a hundred lyrical essays and stories, many originally shared with weblog readers in the author's weblog, Fragments from Floyd. Slow Road Home is a book to read slowly as it unfolds through the seasons. Readers have commented that having read through once, they intend to read it again. Another reader states that Slow Road stays by her bedside where "it just makes me thankful and at peace, and I go to bed looking forward to what the next morning will bring." If you live in or long for the southern mountains, the pages of this book will remind you of the unique sights, sounds and smells of Virginia's Appalachian hills and home. Fred First is a physical therapist who practices part time at a clinic near Radford, Virginia and teaches as adjunct faculty for the biology department at Radford University. He lives on the headwaters of the Roanoke River in a remote part of Floyd County, Virginia, with his wife Ann and yellow lab, Tsuga.
Purchase Now
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What We Hold in Our Hands: A Slow Road Reader
Published: May 2009
In this bigger, faster, throw-away world, Fred First focuses his writer’s lens on the smaller, slower, more permanent riches that are attainable and that we need reminding of in our days on the far side of the Hurry Decades.
From his vantage point in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia, the author elevates the simple and local in a way that will bring a smile, a raised eyebrow, or nod of affirmation. This unique view of the world will be appreciated by fellow biology watchers, grandparents, rural dwellers or wannabes and by those simply seeking a pleasant place to ponder a few minutes before bedtime.
This is a book of considerable variety, to be picked up often and digested in short bites. Organized into ten parts, each contains portions that range from the personal to the local to the global and back again, crafting a shape and flow to the almost one hundred personal revelations and stories, lyrical prose pieces
and light-hearted homilies.
Conversational in tone, the topics simultaneously teach and entertain, search and guide. It is perhaps in the questions the author asks us to ask ourselves about how we relate to each other and the planet that this field excursion of one man’s domain becomes especially worthy of the reader’s notice.
The 6” x 9” volume is illustrated with more than fifty of First’s photographs, with a link in the book to a permanent gallery of these same images in color, plus many additional pictures from his home in Floyd County. An annotated audio version may also be forthcoming.
Information about Fred’s books and photographic notecards is available at goosecreekpress.com and he invites readers to visit his daily photoblog at fragmentsfromfloyd.com
What We Hold In Our Hands: a Slow Road Reader is the author’s second self-published book initially available by direct purchase from Goose Creek Press via the author’s web sites and at select locations near Floyd, Virginia. Slow Road Home is also available from these sources as well as from Amazon and other book vendors via the web and at goosecreekpress.com
$17.95 from goosecreekpress.com
ISBN 978-0-9779395-2-7
fred1st@gmail.com
phone: 540 651 4563