Featured Artist:
Carrie Mullins

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In her work, writer Carrie Mullins likes to explore how an outsider make a home in a place they are not originally from. Carrie Mullins grew up in Mt. Vernon, Ky., where she still lives. “Night Garden,” her first novel, was published by Old Cove Press in 2016. Her fiction has also been published in Chicago Quarterly Review, Appalachian Heritage, Kudzu, the online literary journal Still, and Appalachia Now: Short Stories of Contemporary Appalachia. She is a recipient of the Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, and was awarded an Artist Enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

Artist’s statement:

I like to write about people who find themselves outside the homes and areas where they grew up, who are not sure how to make their way in their present circumstances. I’m interested in how that outsider perspective impacts decisions people make. I’m interested in how we make homes in places other than where we grow up. Many Kentuckians have moved out and made their homes elsewhere for economic reasons – we know what it means to become “rank strangers” in our hometowns – so this is a natural area of curiosity for us, I think. And while I write about outsiders, I love being a part of a creative community, and belong to groups of writers and artists. The need to be on the inside of a community of inspiring and creative people is intense. Belonging and not-belonging are central themes for my writing.

 

Carrie Mullins
Mt. Vernon, Ky.

Email: Ccmullins@windstream.net