Randell Jones
Daniel Boone Footsteps
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6-minute Stories

Everybody loves a good story
Listen to these 6-minute stories
from both new voices and experienced writers
from the Personal Story Publishing Project anthologies:
Bearing Up , Exploring , That Southern Thing , Luck & Opportunity,
Trouble , Curious Stuff , Twists and Turns , Sooner or Later , and Now or Never.
Copies of all 10 books in the series available here.
“6-minute Stories” episodes announced on Facebook @6minutestories

"Finding Home" by Karen Luke Jackson

 – no place is forever

Everywhere I’ve tarried offered a unique bundle of gifts. 

Karen Luke Jackson, of Flat Rock, North Carolina, has authored two poetry collections, The View Ever Changing and GRIT, and her stories have appeared in journals and magazines, including Reckon Review, Nobody’s Home, moonShine review, Emrys Journal, and Town Magazine. Karen also co-edited The Story Mandala: Finding Wholeness in a Divided World. A member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and the North Carolina Poetry Society, Karen draws inspiration from family stories, contemplative practices, nature, and clowning.

Author’s Talk

Karen Luke Jackson

Thanks for listening to “Finding Home,” a journey with so many detours that submitting the story to Twists and Turns was an easy call. Telling it in 800 words, however, was another matter. Perhaps a little about how I wrote it will shed some light. 

When the idea for “Finding Home” surfaced, I generated what former North Carolina Poet Laureate Cathy Smith Bowers calls “hunks of stone”— free writes brimming with memories, concrete observations, associations, sensory details, and abiding images. I then chiseled and mortared those hunks of stone into the story you heard today. 

Crafting poems, I engage the same process but focus on a single hunk and chisel away all but the most striking images and compelling language. That practice has yielded a poetry chapbook, GRIT (Finishing Line Press, 2020), which chronicles my sister’s life as an award-winning clown and a full-length collection, The View Ever Changing (Kelsay Books, 2021), which explores the power of place and family ties. “Finding Home” is the backdrop for a third group of poems I’m working on—ones which explore life in the Garden Hamlet. 

My stories and poems have also appeared in journals and anthologies including Broad River Review (Rash Poetry Award), Ruminate, Atlanta Review, Kakalak, Susurrus, Emrys Journal, moonShine review, and Nobody’s Home. Some of them are posted on my website, if you’d like to check them out. And I also co-edited with Dr. Sally Z. Hare The Story Mandala: Finding Wholeness in a Divided World, a collection of essays that explore how circles of trust transform educational, religious, and health care settings. 

In my work and in my writing, I discovered, as Paul Zak's research confirms, that stories connect strangers and increase our empathy and generosity. With that in mind, I’m happy to swap stories with anyone, anywhere, anytime.—Karen Luke Jackson

Randell Jones