The poems from On Phillips Creek are born from a place that no longer exists except in the writer’s heart, and perhaps they are made stronger for being so well kept within that private landscape. And yet, On Phillips Creek is utterly familiar, especially to those of us in Appalachia who know how coal can be valued more than life, and how a family is built on generations of women who have always had to make hard choices. And how sometimes we look back at loss with gratitude.
— Denton Loving, author of Tamp
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There is a weather for every emotion in Natalie Kimbell’s poems, always fresh and nuanced as every moment is- with tears, joy, heartbreak, revelations. In this book Kimbell’s skill is in lifting the fog of memory, splashing barefoot in the rain of new love, and holding her family as safe as sunlight on the mountains. Here is a woman sharing the prime of her wisdom, her inner weather always big enough for the whole of life!
-Susan Underwood, Author of Splinter
East Tennessee writer Natalie Kimbell was born in Norton Virginia, lived in Worcester, Massachusetts, and settled as a teenager in Dunlap, Tennessee. After forty-two years as a public school teacher in Sequatchie County, Tennessee, she has retired focusing on her writing. Her work appears in many journals and anthologies including Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Mildred Haun Review, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Tennessee Voices, and Artemis. Her first poetry chapbook, On Phillips Creek was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. Her second chapbook, And the Weather Remains the Same, by Finishing Line Press will be released in June 2025.
