Doris Ivie, co-editor of the Knoxville Writers' Guild anthology Breathing the Same Air and Professor of Psychology at Pellissippi State, was, in one of her previous incarnations, the first head of that college's English Department for seven years. She was honored by her peers with PSTCC's Outstanding Full-Time Faculty Member award in 1988-89 and has been nominated for PSTCC's Excellence in Teaching award many times.

Doris entered college during the Cold War when Elvis was King but Science was God (and Einstein was her patron saint); she was torn between her interests in nuclear physics and psychology and thus (logically) majored in nuclear engineering.  In her junior year she realized she enjoyed reading and talking about literature much more than working kinetics problems, so she earned her BA and MA in English, then took jobs in technical writing and translating (French) because those fields paid better than teaching. She was first published internationally at age nineteen in the professional journal Isotopes and Radiation Technology ("A History of Accidents with Radioisotopes from 1945 to 1962"--a real page-turner). She also wrote reviews for the literary journal Southern Observer in order to get free books and relished seeing her byline alongside those of some of her professors, who inexplicably seemed less delighted than she by the juxtaposition.

After awhile, "the world of ideas" lured her away from more lucrative work and she hired on as a full-time Instructor with the University of Tennessee English Department. But one day the absurdity of meticulously, sometimes even lovingly, grading papers which were summarily stored in a vault for two years and then burned drove her to do what any sensible young woman in her twenties would have done at the time: she became a jeweler and a batik artist, while writing occasional poems and songs and traveling around the country in a VW bus.

Poverty and impending maturity forced her to reconsider a teaching career, and she became the first female faculty member hired at Pellissippi State when it was an infant technical institute offering three engineering technology majors--and she was the only applicant with experience in both engineering and English. The more she taught English, the more she thought and read about psychology; thus began another incarnation. Doris earned her PhD at age fifty and now helps students of all ages examine their lives through writing. Though she could not help continuing to write, Doris made no effort to get published for years--though some of her work was occasionally published here and there at the request of editors.  She had just earned her doctorate when the call for submissions for KWG's All Around Us poetry anthology came out; subsequently, she was so thrilled that the editors actually published three of her poems that she started reconsidering the possibility that she might be a writer. (Publication in All Around Us also came right after she had found herself yet again falling in love with words while composing her doctoral dissertation--an effort she had not assumed she would enjoy.)

Then the Guild announced it would publish a collection of memoirs, and since she was already teaching her psychology students to interview elders, she volunteered to help conduct workshops. Though she was too young at the time to qualify to include her own memoir in the collection, she wrote two "as told to" pieces for that KWG anthology.  Once again, the KWG had reminded her that she is a writer. She is deeply indebted to the Guild and its many producing writers for the multitudinous ways they have mentored her, and she encourages everyone who hasever thought about writing to attend Guild meetings for inspiration, fun, and camaraderie.

A charter member of KWG, Doris served on the Board from 1997-2000. She believes inerrantly that Breathing the Same Air is the best regional anthology in the history of the universe, and she is honored to have served as its co-editor. Any day now, she may compile a book or two of her own.