MS. CAROLYN HEMBREE

Instructor
MFA, University of Arizona

Carolyn Hembree was born to foreign language professors in the twin city of Bristol, Tennessee. The family later settled in Birmingham, Alabama. Following her graduation from Birmingham-Southern College, Carolyn moved to New York by way of Greenville, South Carolina. During these lean years, she found employment as a cashier, housecleaner, cosmetics consultant, telecommunicator, actor, receptionist, paralegal, and freelance writer. She least enjoyed her brief post in a hotel basement where she alphabetized business cards next to a ten-pound bag of defrosting chicken parts. Like so many stars, Carolyn burned too brightly: her film debut was, alas, her swan song. For the NYU student flick Altered States, the aspiring actor, an albino boa constrictor draping her shoulders, spun in the February rain atop a roof in Alphabet City. After a visit by train to Emily Dickinson's Amherst, Carolyn decided to pursue the less perilous vocation of poetry writing.

Carolyn received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. During her time in the desert, she studied with poets Jon Anderson, Barbara Cully, Jane Miller, and Steve Orlen. A Dean of Humanities Fellow, Carolyn was granted instructor rank and a course reduction. She taught composition and creative writing to undergraduates. Other honors she enjoyed during her graduate career included: a Graduate Tuition Scholarship, a University of Arizona Foundation Award, an Honorable Mention from the Academy of American Poets, a Margaret Sterling Memorial Award, and an Arizona State Poetry Society Fellowship. She also served as Poetry Editor for Sonora Review, the university's literary journal.

In 2001, Carolyn and husband Jonathan Padgett moved to New Orleans, Louisiana because they loved it. She soon joined the faculty of UNO to teach creative writing and composition. A regular visitor at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts and Lusher High, Carolyn has also enjoyed her role as a teaching artist in the New Orleans community. The most sobering and challenging of these experiences was her work with the Greater New Orleans Writing Project. Since the storm, she has regularly volunteered for Jewish Family Services. Through this nonprofit's Teen Life Counts program, Carolyn visits local public and private high schools to present an interactive curriculum on suicide prevention.

Carolyn is currently working on her second manuscript, Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague. Her first, Manhattan Geisha Skinny, was recently selected as a finalist for Fordham University's Poets Out Loud series. Carolyn has received two Pushcart Prize nominations for individual poems. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, Cream City Review, Indiana Review, Jubilat, New Orleans Review, Poetry Daily, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Her poetry will soon appear in two anthologies: one about Katrina, one about drinking. In 2005, Carolyn received a $5000 Fellowship Award in Literature from the Louisiana Division of the Arts.

Carolyn and Jonathan live in a green bungalow with three rescue dogs and one rescue cat.

Phone Number:
(504) 280-6476

Email Ms. Hembree@
chembree@uno.edu

Address: Liberal Arts Building 379

Office Hours:

On Leave

Courses for Fall 2009:

On Leave