Jack Rentfro has been a Writers’ Guild member for several years. His work appeared in two of its anthologies, Literary Lunch (2002), and Breathing the Same Air (2000). His labor-of-love project, Cumberland Avenue Revisited: Four Decades of Music from Knoxville, Tennessee (Cardinal Publishing 2003), combines his interests in writing and music.

The freelance writer and editor’s experience as a mainstream journalist began at the Clinton Courier-News in 1981 and concluded at the Knoxville Journal. When the Journal folded at the end of 1991, Rentfro began finding work with technical newsletters and was a regular contributor to the non-profit environmental quarterly, Tennessee Green. He wrote for and edited Environmental Stewardship and Value Engineering and its predecessor, Pollution Prevention Advisor, for several years until the U.S. Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration ceased production of these environmental advocacy publications. Some of the more enjoyable experiences during his freelancing career include working for the Investigative Reporting Fund of Asheville, N.C. and having a lengthy travel/historical article about the Battle of Fort Sanders published in Civil War Times Illustrated . In 1993, his short story, “Earthmother Stormtrooper,” won first place at the Tennessee Mountain Writers Conference.

Rentfro, a mixed heritage lad (Reb and Yank soldiers in his genes), is originally from Cleveland, Tenn., home of the Church of God of Prophecy, the House of Happy Feet, the Wha-a-Burger and the “Fastest Quarter Mile in the South” drag strip. He left this idyllic hamlet for the University of Tennessee in 1971, taking the 10-year route to a degree in communications. The academic odyssey was extenuated mainly due to the disproportionate enthusiasm he had for playing bass and harmonica in two bands—Potluck, a “hippie” band of the ‘70s, and, later, Cheap Shoes, a reggae/original folk rock group. Both of these bands were familiar to Strip regulars in those days. Cheap Shoes performed frequently in the emerging downtown club scene of the first half of the ‘80s as well. His love of music and Beat poetry caused him to fall in league with poet/songwriter RB Morris, keeper of Knoxville’s soul and publisher of seminal underground literary journal of the ‘80s, the Hard Knoxville Review. Rentfro’s friendship with musicians from his first days in Knoxville would prove invaluable in assembling the Cumberland Avenue Revisited anthology.

Rentfro doesn’t get around like he used to but he tries keeping a hand in where ever local writers and artists are stirring. He and his wife, Angie, raise vegetables and critters at their small farm just a pine cone toss south of the Union county line.