I lived in Central Asia for nearly four years, from June 2002 to March 2006, first as a university instructor through the U.S. Peace Corps and later as manager of the Edmund S. Muskie Graduate Fellowship Program in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. I currently live with my wife at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Clermont, Kentucky, where I am the 2006 Bernheim Writer-in-Residence.
My fiction, poetry, and essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in a number of publications, including Aethlon, Isotope, Many Mountains Moving (as winner of their 2005 Flash Fiction Contest), Permafrost, Rock & Sling, and the anthologies A Life Inspired: Tales of Peace Corps Service and Scent of Cedars: Promising Writers of the Pacific Northwest. Additionally, my poetry has twice been recognized by Glimmer Train Stories, in their April and October 2003 Poetry Opens.
A selection from my first collection of short stories, Making Love While Levitating Three Feet in the Air: And Other Stories of Flight, was chosen one of three grand prizewinners in the Santa Fe Writers Project’s 2005 Literary Awards Program.
I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Bowling Green State University and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Eastern Washington University. From 2000-2002, I worked as an editor with the WSU Press and instructor in the Department of English at Washington State University.
Prior to this, I worked for several years as a newspaper journalist and freelance writer. My feature stories, interviews, and reviews have appeared widely in the Boise Weekly, Bowling Green (Ohio) Sentinel-Tribune, Cleveland Scene Magazine, and Park City (Utah) Mountain Times, among others. I won a 1996 Ohio Public Images Award of Merit for my feature on a Special Olympics athlete.
My personal interests are inextricably entwined with my writing and, like my literary tastes, wide-ranging. They include mythology, folklore, comparative religion, philosophy, psychology, astronomy, quantum physics, environmentalism, art, music, sports, and how they all relate to literature and the human experience.
My time living and working along the Silk Road is a natural extension of my interest in the region’s people and history, particularly the fabulously rich period that might properly be called the Golden Age of Islam (9th-12th centuries A.D.). In Central Asia, this period saw art, science, religion, and religious tolerance develop to a degree remarkable even today. My wife and I have also traveled more broadly throughout Asia, to China, India, Turkey, and Uzbekistan, where we have witnessed firsthand many of the wonders, both ancient and contemporary, of this fascinating continent.
Good writing explores the human condition as it is, but great writing points us in the direction of what we can be. The same applies to teaching. The best teachers do more than point out static models of so-called great humans in the past; they encourage their students to rise to greatness themselves, however that may be individually defined.
I always remain open to dialoguing with others interested in my writing, writing in general, or any of the issues mentioned above. I may be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

website: http://www.Jeff-Fearnside.com