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fred1st
Since his earliest years in Birmingham, Alabama, Fred First has called several places in the southern Appalachians home. An Auburn graduate with a MS in Zoology and an avid naturalist, he first moved to Virginia in 1975 to teach at Wytheville Community College. In a mid-life career change, he earned a masters degree in Physical Therapy and practiced in that field in North Carolina for six years before moving—permanently, he says—to Floyd County in 1997. In 2002, his personal focus shifted from what he did for a living to where it was that he lived. He continues to explore the beauties and perplexities of his rural Blue Ridge valley in words and images, including a daily photo-journal called "Fragments from Floyd." Much of his writing and pondering turns to sense of place and belonging, especially as they relate to the Southern Mountains. Fred is active in his Floyd County community, as member of the Floyd Writers Circle and is a board member at the Jacksonville Center, Floyd's Arts Center and arts incubator. Speaking engagements include guest lecturer at Virginia Tech (Appalachian Cultures class) and spoken word readings given locally in Floyd, including Floyd Fest 2004. He has participated as a student at the Highlands Summer Conference in Radford and at the JC Campbell Folk School (2003) and presented his "photomemoir" at the Appalachian Studies Conference at Radford University in March, 2005. Fred is a regular essayist on Roanoke's NPR station (WVTF). His works are published in various places including Blue Ridge Country Magazine, Petlife, Greenprints, Birmingham Arts Journal, Flow (Glassblowers trade magazine) and Nantahala Review. He writes a regular column, A Road Less Traveled, in the Floyd Press. Fred's photographs have been featured in promotional materials for the New River Valley Land Trust and the Floyd County Chamber of Commerce. Fred teaches biology at Radford University as adjunct faculty while he pursues his interests in writing and nature/rural landscape photography. He has also re-entered clinical work, part-time, as a physical therapist at a privately-run outpatient clinic not far from home. Since the release of Slow Road Home in May 2006, he has been working on future projects which include a full color coffee table type book in which his Blue Ridge landscapes and scenic details take center stage, supplemented by selections from Slow Road and fresh writing that elaborates on the images; and a book that draws from his “field notes” about nature and the rural life. Fred, and his pharmacist wife Ann, live in a remote Blue Ridge valley where they enjoy what he calls “progressive life in the slow lane” in Floyd County—a county so unhurried it has but a single traffic light.
Latest page update: Jun 20 2007, 5:00 PM EDT
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