RHYTHM, OBSERVATION, UNDERSTANDING, TRANSFORMATION, & EXPRESSION.
r.o.u.t.e. is an art and literary journal carving paths amidst the unknown.
Lindsey Windland
Artists in Volume II
Valentine m. Valentine
Xyara Asplen
Xyara Asplen strives to be a product of the places that have shaped her. She was born in a flooded river on the Eastern shore of Maryland; grew up in the back of an East Kentucky holler, homeschooled and a little wild, with trees for her best friends; and spent her coming-of-age years moving through the lost prairies of the Midwest to the granite and reds and stone of the Rockies to the madrone forests of the Rogue Valley and finally back home to the edge of Appalachia, where she's been joyfully rooted for the past fourteen years. As a writer, nature connection mentor, intergenerational caregiver, amateur restoration ecologist, and dabbler in traditional arts, she does her best to live and work in the liminal space where animism and science interface.
Oja Vincent
Professor Beth Feagan
Beth Feagan (she/her) grew up in southcentral Virginia, the Piedmont region. Midway between the mountains and the ocean, tobacco country, poor. She has lived all over but went back home to raise her son so he could grow up in her childhood woods and swimming hole. Since 2013 she has taught at Berea College in Kentucky where she has put down new roots, but she still goes home for holidays and backyard stew.
Libby Falk Jones
C. Phillip Willette'
Phil is a longtime cherished member of the r.o.u.t.e. community, with a strong background in arts education empowering all peoples to find their creative abilities including youth with learning differences, neighbors in his local rural communities, and more. He attended a fine arts academy in Fort Wayne where he established a solid understanding of painting techniques. After graduating, he worked on set designs for major broadway plays, grew awesome standout flower & vegetable gardens on a healthy bed of straw, and was a friend to many a cat including but not limited to, (....). Mr. Willette can warp an antique loom, spin raw sheeps wool into gold with just his fingers and a few special plants, and weave incredible antler handled baskets from wild harvested materials. We are so lucky to have him here in this community.
Mirra esther
Mirra: She’s deep purple like the inside of a plum or a fancy fig. Mirra has been navigating the brambles of traumatic past experiences. It’s true, she’s unwittingly jumped right into bramble bushes before. Curation for this literary journal has been a blackberry among the thorns. In this space she explores fruit of syntax of with all its facets; drupelet by drupelet, so that when it gets right down to it her body can assimilate what it’s digesting. Thorn, stem, rhizome, root fruit, flower. Go on, ask her.
