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Joanna Beth Tweedy

Born: in Murphysboro, Illinois
Pen Name: None

Connection to Illinois: Tweedy is a native of Murphysboro, Illinois, in the Little Egypt region of Southernmost Illinois. She graduated from the Universities of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and Springfield.

Biography: Tweedy is the author of ''The Yonder Side of Sass and Texas'', a novel written in the South Midland Dialect and published by Southeast Missouri State University Press. She is the founding editor and host of Quiddity International Literary Journal and Public-Radio Program, distributed by NPR-member/PRI-affiliate WUIS, Illinois Public Radio’s hub-station. Her poetry and fiction have been published in literary journals and anthologies and have received honors from ''Glimmer Train'', the ''Southern Women Writers Conference'', ''Alsop Review'', the ''Ray Bradbury Creative Writing Contest'', ''Life Press'', and ''Long Story Short'', among others.With degrees in education, English, and values-driven leadership from the Universities of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Springfield (UIS), and Benedictine University, respectively, Tweedy has taught creative writing, literature, and educational leadership, and has served as faculty-in-residence for the Capital Scholars Honors Program at UIS. She is a native of Little Egypt in the Shawnee Hills of southernmost Illinois and has presented widely in the United States and abroad on such topics as linguistic landscapes and dialects, literary publishing, and sustainability.


Awards:
  • -- ''Alsop Review'' editor’s prize, fiction
  • -- ''Glimmer Train'' finalist, fiction
  • -- The Southern Women Writers Conference, fiction
  • -- ''New Millennium Writing'' finalist, fiction
  • -- The Ray Bradbury Creative Writing Contest, honorable mention, poetry
  • -- ''Long Stor

Primary Literary Genre(s): Fiction; Poetry

Primary Audience(s): Adult readers

Email: joannabethtweedy@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joannabeth.tweedy
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zazzypbh
Joanna Beth Tweedy on WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=joanna+beth+tweedy


Selected Titles

The yonder side of Sass and Texas :
ISBN: 9780979871467 OCLC: 308199917

Southeast Missouri State University Press, Cape Girardeau, MO : 2009.

Raised deep in the Shawnee Hills amid hogback bluffs, a roundabout river, and unending family, two divergent sisters share a colorful journey: first through childhood in a place both blessed and cursed by the hybrid footprints of the Appalachia and Ozark regions surrounding it, and then into the world beyond, compelled by their shared wanderlust. Arkansas (Sass) and Texas MacTerptin gradually understand that the sheltered bluffs of their youth are vastly removed from the broad ground beyond, and they find themselves on a truly foreign journey, separated from familiarity by an ocean and realizing amid their travels the depth of native soil all over again.

 

 

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