Description
Joseph Meigs was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Berkeley, California, and Jacksonville, Florida. He holds a B.A. (1964) in English with minors in chemistry and biology, having attended the University of Florida on a basketball scholarship. He received his Ph.D. in English there in 1970 and went on to teach literature (Shakespeare, American Literature, and Literary Criticism) and film studies at Western Carolina University until retiring in 2005. A photographer and watercolor painter, he currently serves as the president and is one of the resident artists for the Jackson County (NC) Visual Arts Association. He is the author of Tenure Track (a satire about the hurdles one must jump to receive tenure, published in 2002) and Death Without Dignity (a comic murder mystery, published in 2010).
When Joseph Meigs spins a tale, you can expect it to be sharp-witted, observant, and downright entertaining. After all, Meigs is a latter-day Renaissance man— Shakespeare scholar, cinema aficionado, popular university professor, and an artist himself. So, he knows the territory about which he writes, and he knows its inhabitants’ quirks, fears, passions, and jealousies. When I first read Artists’ Tales, I was taken with the diversity of those inhabitants’ artistry. “The Chili Artist” is unforgettable, to name one. We all know this character, but Joe Meigs knows him even better, enough to make him come alive in a completely human way. From the mythic “Hero and Leander” to the concluding “An Artist’s Heaven,” this book introduces us to a gathering of “artists” we won’t soon forget. Only Meigs, consummate raconteur, could make them come alive with such flair and humanity.
—Kathryn Stripling Byer Bayer, former poet laureate of North Carolina, author of numerous works, including Descent (2012).
The stories in Joe Meigs’ fine collection Artists’ Tales take us on a journey into the self, a territory fraught with struggle, yet rich in the realizations of what it means to be human. At times dark and somber, at other times witty and humorous in depictions of the varieties of artists, would-be artists, self-proclaimed artists, Meigs’ narrators are all sharp-eyed observers who depict worlds within that world that is art and its making. Who can resist a supernatural tale about an artist who buys paints with magical powers or a story about a man who discovers the meaning of being an artist rediscovering the art of his mother? For wit and humor “The Chili Artist” is laugh-out-loud hilarious. But perhaps best of all and perfect as the closing story is “An Artist’s Heaven,” a tour de force! Indeed, this book is a virtual artist’s palette.
—Jeff Daniel Marion Marlon, author of The Chinese Poet Awakens (1999), Ebbing and Flowing Springs (2002), & Father (2009).
