Chelsea Adams

Home Back Issues Subscribe Submissions Contributors Featured Authors About Us Staff

Floyd County Moonshine, LLC, 720 Christiansburg Pike, Floyd, VA 24091-2440 USA

B. Chelsea Adams admits that her first addiction was to books.

She, her husband, and two daughters moved from Vermont to Floyd in 1980. She worked for New River Community Action as a home visitor, and her husband became a special education teacher at Floyd Elementary school. The next year they bought land in Riner and began building a house there.

Chelsea grew up in Connecticut and completed a BA in English at the University of Connecticut. She received her MA from Hollins College in Creative Writing and English and taught English at Radford University for over 24 years.

Her chapbook, Java Poems (2007), celebrates her 2nd addiction: to coffee. Her husband, Bill, a guitarist, plays jazz to accompany her as she reads her java poems in local coffee houses.

She was the featured writer in the summer issue of r.kv.r.y online journal (2012) and interviewed by Barbara Ewell who taught at Radford University for many years.

In 2000, her poetry chapbook Looking for a Landing was published by Sow's Ear Press. In 2012, Finishing Line Press published her book of poems At Last Light. The following are quotes from local writers about At Last Light:

The poems of Chelsea Adams, quiet and meditative, express moments of personal insight that not only reveal day by day wonders of the natural and human world but also, like music, help to heal the scars that accrue from this often difficult life we lead. (Richard H. W. Dillard, poet, novelist, and scholar, whose latest book is What is Owed the Dead)

At Last Light celebrates so much—the beauty of age and love, of jazz and nature, of waltzing down a country road. No wonder Chelsea Adams claims she is ‘owned’ by words. They are as rich and ‘vibrant’ here as an autumn red maple that ‘shatters’ the afternoon.” (Jim Minick, author of Blueberry Years: A Memoir of Farm and Family, Winner of the SIBA Book of the Year, and books of poems: Her Secret Song, Burning Heaven)

At Last Light invites the reader into a sensual delight in the world; soles of the feet, “no trowel,” first kiss affair with living. The world is rough, children are rough, but “yes” is the only way to engage the world. The reader is rewarded by falling into earth with the last token of intimacy: a strand of hair entangled in a spider’s web. (Mary Hayne North, Tic Toc Café, winner of the Virginia Poetry Prize, 1982)

At Last Light has been nominated for the 16th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Poetry Prize.

Chelsea Adams

Featured Author Issue 5.2 Fall 2013