Michael HensonMichael Henson was raised in Sidney, Ohio, and has worked as a schoolteacher in rural Appalachia, a farm hand, machine tender, and a house painter. But for most of his career he has alternated between work as a drug and alcohol counselor and a communty organizer running a neighborhood community center, working on public school issues, and opposing environmental pollution in an urban Appalachian neighborhood. For nearly thirty years, he has served as an adjunct professor of English at Xavier. He earned degrees in English at Xavier University in Cincinnati and the University of Chicago. He served as an officer of the Council of the Southern Mountains, Appalachian Focus, and other Appalachian and civil rights groups. He is a member of the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative and has served as co-editor of their annual publication, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. He plays mandolin and guitar with the Old Coney Bluegrass Band and with the roots duo Carter Bridge. He is the author of four books of fiction and four collections of poetry. His book, The Way the World Is: the Maggie Boylan Stories, won the 2014 Brighthorse Prize in Short Fiction.

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