Writer of Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry and Master Photographer
While “Lincoln’s pockets” sounds like an interesting name for a band, it’s actually the result of a couple of articles I recently read about what the 16th president had on him the night he was assassinated. On that fateful night, April 14, 1865, when Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theatre, he…
I’ve really enjoyed the emails, texts, posts on social media and responses from readers about Galvanized: The Odyssey of a Reluctant Carolina Confederate. People have sent me copies of documents and photographs, and in some instances, ideas for future blog posts. I love it, and that’s what I started this blog for — to interact…
In my first book, Memory Cards: Portraits from a Rural Journey, I wrote about the three girls who are buried on my parents’ farm, in a small plot near my house. The Winstead sisters, Mamie Harriet, 21; Mary Frances, 18; and Eula Pearl, 9 went swimming in the Tar River during a blistering July heat…
There were a lot of interesting things I ran across while researching Galvanized that either didn’t get much coverage in the book, had to be cut or edited, or just simply weren’t relevant. The story of the Immortal 600 got brief mention in Chapter 13 “Statues of Limitation” because there is a statue in Washington,…
(Feedback used in this post was not solicited. —MKB) Let’s face it, writers have egos. Those egos are fragile and no matter how large, they need feeding. I tell my creative writing students that a writer has to have an ego. If you’re going to put words out in the world for people to read…
One thing about writing a book is that you learn so much. Galvanized was a fun education for me, mostly North Carolina history from the early 1800s through the late 1880s. One of the characters I’d always been fascinated about is Zebulon Vance. Vance was a legislator, governor, senator, and mostly loved by the people…
“‘The Civil War is just as complicated now as the day it started.’ . . . Brantley deftly combines military and social history, a gripping narrative of one private soldier, and his personal struggle to make sense of a savage, fratricidal war and the morally fraught heritage that continues to haunt the South.” —Philip Gerard,…
By Michael K. Brantley Two convicted murderers met their fate on the gallows in Nash County’s last public hanging on March 15, 1900. The story of John Henry Taylor and Robert Fortune and the murder of Robert Hester is a tragic one. All that end in capital punishment are. It’s also a story of mistaken…
“As the author’s research reveals the journey of his great-great-grandfather across Nash County and battlefields of the Civil War, Michael K. Brantley discovers that exploring the past reveals the explored but changes the explorer. A worthy literary effort!” —Wade G. Dudley, author of Remembering North Carolina and Splintering the Wooden Wall I was honored to get this quote…
By Michael K. Brantley There is some interesting art that often gets overlooked — in post offices across the country. These are big murals that were painted mostly in the 1930s and 40s. I’d always heard these were done by the WPA, but a little digging revealed they were actually commissioned by the Treasury Department’s…