Several of you have asked me about the poet who provided the captions to the chapters in Death’s Half Acre. Rather than continue answering separately, let me introduce him here and now.
Shelby Dean Stephenson is my third cousin, once removed. We have known each other since third grade and graduated from high school together. Like me, he had to leave home in order to find it again. Like me, he still lives on family land about five miles from my house. (His is part of the original land grant while the land I live on has only been in my family a hundred years.) Like him, I wanted to be a poet, but he was the one who persevered and now has many volumes to his credit.
Winner of the 2008 Bellday Prize (www.BelldayBooks.com) for the recently published Family Matters: Homage to July, the Slave Girl, you can read more about him at http://www.shelbystephenson.com/home.htm.
