Colleen Anderson is a freelance writer, performer, and graphic designer in Charleston, WV. Her songs have been featured on Mountain Stage, The Folk Sampler, Music from the Mountains, and Sidetracks. She has produced two collections of original songs, Fabulous Realities and Going Over Home. With Julie Adams and Karen Vuranch, she has produced POTLUCK, a CD compilation of stories and songs about women, cooking, and community.
She has also written reviews, travel articles, and feature articles for Mid-Atlantic Country, West Virginia Quarterly, Goldenseal, and The Charleston Gazette, and for more than 10 years has written editorial copy for West Virginia’s official visitor guide. Her short stories have appeared in Redbook, The Available Press/PEN Short Story Collection, Kestrel, Antietam Review, and others. Two stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her collection “Windfall” won first place in the 1996 WV Writers annual competition, and her poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines. She has won two $3,500 Literature Fellowships from the WV Commission on the Arts and a residency fellowship from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, New Mexico. Anderson’s short essays for West Virginia Public Radio won awards in two national competitions.
In the past 20 years, Anderson has conducted hundreds of creative writing workshops for students and adults in West Virginia and other states. She leads songwriting and short essay workshops at Ghost Ranch, an arts center in New Mexico, Elderhostel workshops in creative writing at Cedar Lakes Conference Center, and an annual Women’s Writing Weekend at Tygart Lake State Park in West Virginia.
For information about this and other workshops, as well as samples of her writing, design work and photography, she welcomes your visit to her website: www.motherwitdesign.com
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