Christine Hale's new book, A Piece of Sky, A Grain of Rice: A Memoir in Four Meditations, is forthcoming from Apprentice House Press in July 1, 2016.
Ms. Hale is the author of a novel, Basil’s Dream (Livingston Press, 2009), which received honorable mention in the 2010 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. National Book Award finalist Joan Silber says “Basil’s Dream…seems to prove fiction can go where other forms can’t.”
Christine Hale's short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Arts & Letters, Hippocampus, Still, Citron Review, Prime Number, Spry, Saw Palm, Mandala, The Sun, and PMS, among other journals. A fellow of MacDowell, Ucross, Hedgebrook, Hambidge and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ms. Hale has been a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her work in progress includes a collection of linked short stories.
A native of the southern Appalachians, as were her parents, Ms. Hale grew up in Bristol, Virginia. She received an MBA from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She worked in investment banking in New York City in the early 80s, began teaching writing in 1996 at the University of Tampa, and in the intervening years worked as a freelance writer and editor in business communications in New York and Tampa. From 1989 to 1992, she lived in Bermuda. A former Beebe Teaching Fellow at Warren Wilson College, she now teaches in the Antioch University – Los Angeles Low-Residency MFA Program and the Great Smokies Writing Program. Ms. Hale lives in Asheville, NC.
Ms. Hale is the author of a novel, Basil’s Dream (Livingston Press, 2009), which received honorable mention in the 2010 Library of Virginia Literary Awards. National Book Award finalist Joan Silber says “Basil’s Dream…seems to prove fiction can go where other forms can’t.”
Christine Hale's short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Arts & Letters, Hippocampus, Still, Citron Review, Prime Number, Spry, Saw Palm, Mandala, The Sun, and PMS, among other journals. A fellow of MacDowell, Ucross, Hedgebrook, Hambidge and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Ms. Hale has been a finalist for the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. Her work in progress includes a collection of linked short stories.
A native of the southern Appalachians, as were her parents, Ms. Hale grew up in Bristol, Virginia. She received an MBA from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She worked in investment banking in New York City in the early 80s, began teaching writing in 1996 at the University of Tampa, and in the intervening years worked as a freelance writer and editor in business communications in New York and Tampa. From 1989 to 1992, she lived in Bermuda. A former Beebe Teaching Fellow at Warren Wilson College, she now teaches in the Antioch University – Los Angeles Low-Residency MFA Program and the Great Smokies Writing Program. Ms. Hale lives in Asheville, NC.
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Christine Hale’s memoir A Piece of Sky, A Grain of Rice vividly and beautifully describes a chaotic life, and rather than the expected acceptance that accompanies a Buddhist memoir, this book finds several avenues out of pain, including tattoos, which come to represent the sometimes ragged fashion in which people are able to love. I couldn’t stop thinking about this book after I read it: the many startling scenes and places brought so vividly to life, the rich detail, and the remarkable (if deeply flawed) people who populate its pages. A candid, deeply absorbing tale.
~Debra Spark, author of Good for the Jews
~Debra Spark, author of Good for the Jews