Alan
Sims
Alan Sims was born and lived in Alabama until he graduated
from Mobile College with a BA in psychology. While in Alabama he fell in
love with the writing of Hank Williams and Bob Dylan. He then moved to Gainesville,
Florida where he earned his M.Ed. and Ed.S in Mental Health Counseling.
While in Florida he wrote poetry and was blessed to take a class with Richard
Eberhardt.
He moved to Knoxville in 1982 and in subsequent years, with encouragement
from Flossie McNabb and a Davis-Kidd reading group, discovered a love for
southern literature, particularly Cormac McCarthy, William Faulkner and
(later) William Gay. After taking a poetry class with Arthur Smith at UT
he concluded poetry was not his strength and eventually wrote an unpublished
novel, took a short fiction class with Allen Wier and published a short
story in the Texas Review.
He is a long-time member of the short fiction writer's group in the guild
and is currently submitting short stories for publication, writing a second
novel and spending an inordinate amount of time writing for his blog Stuck
Inside of Knoxville w/ the Urban Blues Ag'n (http://www.stuckinsideofknoxville.blogspot.com).
In 2001 he earned a M.S. in Information Sciences from UT and has since been
happily surrounded by books and employed as a school librarian.
