Josh Poole, you could say, he keeps busy. The Lexington-based author and artist works at Washington & Lee as a copy services assistant, and when he’s not on the job or writing fiction, he’s touring the state with a collection of samurai figurines that he crafted over the past six years from soda cans.
Poole, who grew up near Jump Mountain, 30 miles northwest of Lexington, took a non-traditional route into the world of arts and letters.
“I’ve had a satisfying literary career so far and even managed to place a fantasy novel with a traditional publisher this year, but I can’t help but wonder where I’d be if I’d gone the academia route rather than entering the workforce directly after high school,” he said in an interview with the W&L News Office for a “Meet a Colleague” story item earlier this year.
My two cents on that: academia can be overrated when it comes to producing art.
Get out and live, like Josh Poole obviously does, and you’ll find your inspiration.
Poole and Wellman – a writer and poet who is the director of the Stonerose Interpretive Center and its fossil dig in Republic, Washington – describe The Shards of Acrilon as “a high fantasy novel set in a world where the inhabitants have been cursed to forget the dead and the main protagonists are trying to piece together a relic to undo the curse.”
From the back of cover blurb:
A loved one passes and, instantly, all memory of them leaves your mind. That has been the reality of the world ever since the Heart of Acrilon was destroyed millennia ago. Until Quinn Vesper was born. The sole person able to remember the dead and see spirits, Quinn navigates a haunted, broken world, having made it their goal to rebuild the Heart to free everyone from its curse. Of course, things are never that simple, as they and their party contend with ferocious shardbeasts born from the very shards they’re gathering as well as powerful factions who want the Heart for their own reasons.
Poole’s work has appeared in Air Mail Magazine and Las Traumadas, along with more than a dozen print anthologies, including Madame Gray’s Poe-Pourri of Terror!
He was a winner in Vocal Media’s 2021 Summer Fiction Writing Contest and the Sejong Cultural Society’s 18th Annual Writing Competition.
Wellman has been published in The World of Myth Magazine, and in print anthologies Ike Pāpālua – Science Fiction & Fantasy from the Hawaiian Islands, Bigfoot Country and Are You A Robot?
The Shards of Acrilon is available on pre-order at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
In addition to the Sept. 22 event at Downtown Books, Poole will be on hand for signings of the new book at:
- the Sept. 26 Prism Festival hosted by Stone Soup Books in Waynesboro
- the Oct. 10 Buena Vista Mountain Day
- the Oct. 17 Timber Ridge Fall Festival in Lexington
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Chris Graham
