Cortney Lance Bledsoe
Cortney Lance Bledsoe is an American writer, poet, and book reviewer. He has published eight books and hundreds of short stories, poems, essays, short plays, and reviews in many literary journals and anthologies. Bledsoe has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize ten times, Best of the Net twice, and won the Blue Collar Review’s Working People’s Poetry Contest in 2004. He currently lives outside Baltimore..
Early life
Bledsoe was born in Wynne, Arkansas and grew up on a working rice farm. In addition to rice, soybeans, milo, and other crops, his family raised and sold cattle, catfish, and buffalo fish. His mother suffered from Huntington's disease. Bledsoe’s experiences on his family’s farm and his mother’s illness greatly influenced his writing, especially his early poetry, much of which has been collected in Riceland.Education
In high school, Bledsoe co-founded a punk rock band, alternately called Maria Static, and later Shizknit. They performed sporadically around Arkansas before breaking up in 2001.Bledsoe received a Bachelor’s in Arts with a focus in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas in 2005. While there, he worked as an editor for Exposure: the University of Arkansas’ Literary and Visual Arts Journal. He received a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Hollins University in 2008 and worked as an assistant poetry editor, and later assistant editor, for the Hollins Critic. While at Hollins, he cofounded Ghoti Magazine and was head editor until the journal ceased publication in 2010.
List of works
Poetry
- Anthem
- _____
- Leap Year
- ''Riceland''
Fiction
- Naming the Animals, collected stories
- Last Stand in Zombietown
- Sunlight
- Necro-Files: $7.50/hr + Curses
- Necro-Files: Bloody Sexy
- Necro-Files: Tall, Dark, & Hairy
- Sorting the Dead
- ''Man of Clay''
Reception