Terry Engel

A Mississippi native, Terry Engel grew up dreaming of white-water rivers and mountains, and he has traveled widely and lived in Colorado and Alaska.

However, his fiction and nonfiction continually wander back to the slow rhythms of the South—Mississippi and Tennessee and Arkansas—back to the deep pine and bottomland hardwood forests, open pastureland and fields, tannin stained and cypress lined creeks, and its people.

Engel studied Forest Resources at Mississippi State University and worked as quality control and production supervisor in particleboard mills and wood preservative treatment plants. He was a lineman for the Tennessee Valley Authority, building high voltage powerlines for three years, and he has held other jobs selling books, suppressing fires for the Mississippi Forestry Commission, working assembly lines, painting houses, and delivering exotic birds to pet stores.

He earned a Ph.D. in writing from the University of Southern Mississippi, where he studied at the Center for Writers with Frederick and Stephen Barthelme and Mary Robison.

His work has appeared in a number of literary journals and magazines, and he has received the Transatlantic Review Award, won the Hemingway Days Short Story Writing Contest, and received honorable mention from Pushcart Prize.

His first novel, Natchez at Sunset, is available at Amazon.

Currently, Engel teaches creative writing and literature at Harding University in Arkansas. He is raising his children to be accepting of diverse cultures and perspectives.

Terry was featured in our April 2023 Member Spotlight.