Dean Bonner was born and raised in rural Georgia but can claim naturalized citizenship in Tallapoosa County, Alabama and Virginia Beach, Virginia. As a retired Coast Guard veteran. Bonner left the tarpaper shacks of Appalachia for a long military career, rising through the enlisted and officer ranks. He was a skilled Morse telegrapher and a calming voice during many search and rescue cases. He left a town of 300 souls to travel the world, living in Boston, New Orleans, DC, and even on the island of Guam for a couple of years. 

During his 30 year Coast Guard career, he earned his BS in Security Management and still maintains the highest international certification in Security Management, Certified Protection Professional.  He served his final eight years of active duty as an Intelligence Officer. 

Dean is a skilled Studebaker car mechanic, tube radio repairman, firefighter, and a weekend gold prospector.  His upcoming projects include recording two albums of his original humor and writing a new compilation of short stories. His wife Patricia, a multi-talented artist, shares these same interests. Together, they travel and spend time at homes in Alabama and Virginia.

Dean was a weekly columnist for The Dadeville Record before he began work as a freelance writer for Lake Magazine and Lake Martin Living magazine. His favorite assignment to date was exploring the Hog Mountain gold mine where his grandfather and great-grandfather worked. 


His poetry is published in two collections called The Breaking and A Stormy Beginning, by Scars Publications.  His work was featured in the February 2016 issue of Down in the Dirt literary magazine. 

He wrote feature articles for The Alexander City Outlook, Dadeville Record, Lafayette Sun, and for the arts magazine The Revelator. 

He was a contributing editor for Lisa Ditchkoff's book, The Girl with Caterpillar Eyebrows, about educating herself while she grew up in hiding from her father, an associate of Boston mobster Whitey Bulger.  

Dean was a 2013 winner in nonfiction in Alabama’s largest writing competition, the Alabama Literary Competition, organized by the Alabama Writers' Conclave. He competed against writers nationwide with his nonfiction short story "Seeking Asylum" about visiting his mother in the state insane asylum when he was three.  

Dean has a development contract with Los Angeles-based Council Tree Productions for a television series called Tar Nation that is based on his book I Talk Slower Than I Think.  He co-authored a television pilot screenplay with Heidi Carroll for Tar Nation that placed as a Second Rounder / quarterfinalist in the 2019 Austin Film Festival.

And now you know a little bit more about a person who donates his time and skills to serve the members of Alabama Writer’s Cooperative as historian. Be sure to reach to him if your interests (or paths) cross.

Memoir Writing Workshop in Orange Beach.

One of our new programs is the AWC Community Writing Workshops, which aims to connect local Alabama writers with readers and emerging writers at the microcosmic level. What does this mean?

Well, Jessica Renee Langston and Karim Shamsi-Basha created a Memoir-Writing Workshop free and open to the public in Orange Beach. Of the workshop, Jessica said:

“Making Memories into Memoirs: How to Capture and Convey Your Stories” was fantastic. Karim Shamsi-Basha, our instructor, immediately  made everyone feel comfortable and willing to share. We got to know each other, went through several exercises including title creation, idea maps and outlines, then we delved into writing our memoirs. Many of us shared our stories and it was amazing to see the quality of work created right there in a four-hour window. Karim made writing our life stories seem manageable instead of overwhelming. And we had a lot of fun, too.

Poet Laureate Emerita Sue Walker was in attendance—and she expressed a sincere appreciation for Karim’s workshop. If you aren’t familiar with Sue, she is not only a proficient and celebrated poet but also the publisher of Negative Capability Press located in Mobile, Alabama. Take a peak at this interview she conducted with author Eugene Platt on the NCP blog.

Diane Clark shares a snippet of her life story during a memoir workshop held at the Coastal Arts Center of Orange Beach on Jan. 4.

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Meanwhile, up in Hoover, Claire Datnow put together a fabulous AWC Community Workshop, “A Behind the Scenes Glimpse: Environmental Education and Literature” with an interactive look into how she creates her science-based environmental Eco Mysteries.

Nature lovers, writers, conservationists and adventurers in attendance explored vicarious field trips to diverse natural habits and met the dedicated conservationists who are saving Alabama’s endangered species. The adventure began with a virtual trip to Sehoy Plantation, deep in the heart of a longleaf pine plantation, where the attendees observed Eric Spadgenske with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Mark Bailey, a conservation biologist banding Endangered red-cockaded Woodpeckers. Attendees also traveled to the Mobile-Tensaw Delta to observe the Diamondback Terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin), listed as a species of Highest Conservation Concern, where Research Biologists Ken Marion and Thane Wibbles capture breeding females in the summer, to raise them in a hatchery at UAB.

Ken Wills author of Exploring Wild Alabama and President of Moss Rock Preserve has traveled the entire state as a natural resource planner and biologist for the Alabama Environmental Council. Ken Wills outlined his successful conservation projects to clear invasive species at Moss Rock and Limestone Park, and replace them with native wildflowers and grasses.

We encourage you to read Claire’s blog post on this workshop and rest in the awe of it.

Vitaly Charny, lepidopterist, photographer and co-author of Butterflies of Alabama talked about his field trips over a twenty year period to document Alabama’s butterflies. This project resulted in The Alabama Butterfly Atlas.

Your Turn

If you have a workshop you’d like to share with the public, please read more about our Community Writing Workshops and apply to host or develop your own. Alabama writers bring so much good into their communities and localities. We hope to support this regularly.

AWC was able to raise $1,340.00 for the 2020 Alabama State Poet Laureate Outreach Fund!

We are so grateful to be able to support Jennifer Horne, our state poet laureate in advocating, educating, and cultivating poetry throughout the state. 

Thank you to everyone who shared and donated. This is an example of how much her work is valued, needed, and appreciated. It should be heartening to all of us as we move into a new year of writing, editing, publishing, reading, and journeying with words.

To learn more about Jennifer Horne, visit the State Laureate page or read this conversation about her new poetry collection.

To quote the laureate, herself:

It was such an honor to be named state poet laureate, and I went into it with the general goals of connecting poets to each other and to their communities, amplifying what was going on in the literary community, and encouraging people in Alabama to learn more about and enjoy poetry while creating literary resources and events in their own towns.

When I look at my calendar over the past two years, I can see what a rich journey it's been already (with two still to go). Predictably, I've spoken at writing conferences, done workshops and readings, and been part of a number of literary events such as the One Million Poets event. I've also spoken to a Rotary Club, judged the statewide Poetry Out Loud contest for high school students and several out-of-state contests, helped plan the state book festival, Skyped with a junior high creative writing club in Los Angeles, spoken to an OLLI group about Alabama Writers Hall of Fame inductees, appeared on a panel of poet laureates with the Mississippi (Beth Ann Fennelly) and Louisiana (Jack Bedell) laureates at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, spoken at several schools and churches, and participated in a tribute to Toni Morrison. I regularly correspond with writers seeking advice on publication and writing. I also try to use social media frequently to share information about all the literary activity going on in Alabama.

TJ Beitelman: Like a lot of organizations, AWC really seems at an inflection point. The world is changing—the world of writing/writers is changing—and it can sometimes feel daunting to keep pace and look to the future. It’s really exciting, though, too. Before we do that, though, I want to hear some of your reflections on your tenure as AWC President. What’s your proudest accomplishment in that role?

TK Thorne: I am most proud of bringing onto the board amazing people like you and Alina Stefanescu and Ashley Jones. I’ve found that leadership is often a matter of not standing in the way of good ideas and energy and figuring out ways to support, implement, and augment them. The new energy on the board and the resulting ideas have catapulted us forward, enabling a new website and newsletter which have been keys to fulfilling our mission and resulted in increasing memberships. 

I’m proud that AWC was able to support Alina and Ashley in their initial efforts to bring about the Magic City Poetry Festival, which now stands on its own. Their efforts have also brought a local chapter of PEN America to our region. And I’m really proud of the work we did to navigate a name change and a strategic planning process that has examined who we are and where we want to go. 

TJ Beitelman: That’s a lot to be proud of, for sure. I’ve really admired your vision as a leader, and it doesn’t surprise me that relationships are where it starts for you. What are some other relationships that have been valuable to you in your time as President? 

TK Thorne: I’ve particularly relied on Hank Henley who has served as membership chair and treasurer over the years. I have told him often that he is my “rock.” 

TJ Beitelman: I feel lucky that he’s agreed to stay on board as treasurer. He’s so often the smartest guy in the room, and he’s so good at both listening and then synthesizing information. 

TK Thorne: AWC is a bunch of great, supportive people. Others have contributed in many ways and without them we would not have been able to put on the annual conference (thank you, Jessica Jones), organized the writing contests and publications (thank you, Linda Parker, Carol Hull, Mary Murphy and Anne Bailey). Dean Bonner, as historian, has worked to provide an archival home for our history and a richer layer of the past, a foundation for where we are heading. Claire Datnow, in addition to taking on the position of Recording Secretary, has initiated a program to support workshops in local communities as supplementation to our annual conference. Of course, I can’t say enough about our past presidents, especially Sue B. Walker, who led AWC through challenging times and has been my mentor, always there when I had a question or needed a sounding board. 

TJ Beitelman: That’s a lot to be thankful for. 

TK Thorne: We have competent board members, both new and experienced, ready to support the new leadership. It gives me great pleasure to know the organization is in sound hands, and I am looking forward to continuing to serve as past president. Now I have a question for you: What do you see in the future for AWC?

TJ Beitelman: First I need to learn the ropes. Our succession has been a little unconventional, with JJ choosing to stick with the VP role as opposed to assuming the President’s role, as it has typically been done in the past. I’ll be glad for all of that support you mentioned earlier. 

TK Thorne: I’ll be around too, like Sue was for me!

TJ Beitelman: I’m grateful for that, and for the momentum you’ve created around expanding and diversifying our membership. And the new name is a big reflection of that, by the way. It will likely go down as one of your big legacies as President of the organization. What was that process like for you?

TK Thorne: Consideration of a name change began with input from members about a negative, outdated connotation to the word “conclave,” which means “a private or secret meeting,” the opposite of our vision of an open, inclusive organization. That perception was confirmed for me when I asked a prominent author in Canada to be a speaker at our conference, and she said she hesitated at our name. As a co-chair of the Long-Range Planning Committee, TJ, you took on leadership of a comprehensive, deliberate process that included a membership survey, a working committee, and the board. The recommendations that came out of that were ultimately put to the general membership. I’m happy with our new name, Alabama Writers’ Cooperative" and feel that it represents who we are as an organization, while keeping our sharp new logo and website and linking to our history with “AWC.” I’m really pleased with process and the result.I’m grateful for that, and for the momentum you’ve created around expanding and diversifying our membership. I love our new “tagline”—Engaging and nurturing a diverse community of Alabama writers. I want us to use that as a litmus test for all our programming, and if we do, I see no reason why we can’t really grow in healthy, sustainable ways. 

TJ Beitelman: Well said. I also love our new “tagline,” which came out of that process as well—Engaging and nurturing a diverse community of Alabama writers. I hope we can use the name and that new tagline that as a kind of litmus test for all our programming. How are we fostering a spirit of cooperation among writers and writing organizations in Alabama and beyond? How are we engaging and nurturing a diverse community of those writers? If we work with those questions in mind, I see no reason why we can’t really grow in healthy, sustainable ways. The two places I’d like to focus our energies the most are in the conference itself and in supporting the poet laureate in outreach activities throughout the state. Those are the two historical pillars of the AWC’s enterprise—the conference and the poet laureate—and I want to make sure those pillars are as strong as they possibly can be.   

TK Thorne: It’s an exciting time to be involved in the Alabama Writers’ Cooperative. 

TJ Beitelman: Yes it is. I’m looking forward to the next two years. Thanks for taking the time to volley back and forth like this!

TK Thorne: I’m happy to do it. Onward and upward!

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T.K. Thorne (our Outgoing AWC President) is a retired police captain, explores murder, mayhem, and magic when a police officer discovers she’s a witch in her newest novel, House of Rose, the first of the Magic City stories. T.K.’s childhood passion for storytelling deepened when she became a police officer in Birmingham, Alabama.  “It was a crash course in life and what motivated and mattered to people.” Her writing reflects her eclectic interests. Both of her award-winning debut historical novels, Noah’s Wife and Angels at the Gate,  tell the stories of unknown women in famous tales—the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot. Her first non-fiction book, Last Chance for Justice, the inside story of the investigation and trials of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, was featured on the New York Post’s “Books You Should Be Reading” list. T.K. loves traveling and speaking about her books and life lessons. She writes at her mountaintop home, often with a dogs and cat vying for her lap.

 TJ Beitelman (Our Incoming AWC President) chairs the Creative Writing department at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, where he’s taught writing and literature since 2002. A graduate of the University of Alabama’s MFA program in Creative Writing, he’s been the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham. In addition to his role on the AWC board, he’s also on the board of the Alabama Writers’ Forum. His work has appeared in various literary venues, including DIAGRAM, Posit, Blackbird, Quarterly West, Colorado Review, New Orleans Review, and Bellevue Literary Review. The author of six books, his latest poetry collection, This Is the Story of His Life (2018), is available through Black Lawrence Press. He can be found on-line at tjbman.me and on Twitter: @TJBeitelman.