Candance Reaves

Candance Reaves joined the Knoxville Writers' Guild during its first year. Although she had written poetry for years and had submitted a collection of poems as a master's thesis at the University of Tennessee, she had never attempted to get her work published. Encouraged by other KWG members, she entered three poems in the Tennessee Writers Alliance statewide contest and won second place for a poem about making biscuits called "So Light They Float."  

This success was soon followed by publication in the Guild's first anthology, Voices from the Valley and in Homeworks, an anthology of works by Tennessee Writers. As a published poet, she was asked to read her work at book signings, award ceremonies, a writers' conference, and at a program called Luminous Word, which was jointly sponsored by KWG and the Knoxville Museum of Art. She has further works published in New Millennium Writings and has written historical travel articles for Appalachian Life Magazine.

In 1994 she was elected to the board of the Knoxville Writers' Guild and later that year was asked by KWG president Jack Reese to be co-editor with Linda Parsons of the Guild's anthology of poetry. Publication of All Around Us: Poems from the Valley in 1996 set off a flurry of book signings and readings. In 1997, she was elected vice president of the Guild. (Her two years as vice president coincided with the presidency of Jeanne McDonald, who had been Candance's supervisor and mentor when Candance was an editor at UT.)

As a member, board member, and vice president, Candance has participated in numerous Guild-sponsored activities. In the past, she has been in charge of the Young Poets Prize. As part of the WritersAlive! Project, she read her poems at local high schools and discussed creative writing with the students. She helped conduct workshops at senior centers and screened manuscripts for the Senior Memoirs project, and she taught a beginning poetry class during the KWG Summer Workshops. For several years she helped to staff the KWG booth at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. She was part of a panel of Guild members that discussed the importance of place in literature at a program sponsored by the Friends of the UT Library.

Although the Guild is her primary vehicle for community service, it is not her only one. She is a past president of the 4th and Gill Neighborhood Association, and although she no longer lives in 4th and Gill, she is still intensely interested in preservation of neighborhoods and architectural treasures. She has served as a judge of the Tennessee Mountain Writers fiction contest, and has been on the Awards Committee of the East Tennessee Foundation. Candance was an associate professor of English at Pellissippi State Technical Community College. In addition to composition courses, she taught literature (preferably British) and creative writing. She is now retired and working as a freelance writer and poet.

One of her recent adventures took her to Auvillar, France, where she attended a poetry workshop taught by Marilyn Kallet through the auspices of the Virginia Center for the Creatvie Arts.

In addition to writing, Candance loves art, music, photography and travel. An art major as an undergraduate, she no longer finds much time for drawing or painting but appreciates the works of others. And although she is an unabashed booster of Knoxville who wouldn't want to live anywhere else, she has traveled widely in the United States, Britain, and Europe and is constantly fantasizing about the next trip.In 1995 at the Methodist Church in Cades Cove, Candance married fellow KWG board member John Reaves. They live in Seymour in a house designed by Candance in the style of a 1925 bungalow.