Jim Peterson's poems have won the Benjamin Saltman Award from Red Hen Press, an Academy of American Poets Award, and a Fellowship in Poetry from the Virginia Arts Commission.  A number of his plays have been produced in regional and college theaters.  Until his retirement in 2013, he was Coordinator of Creative Writing at Randolph College and was later the Pearl S. Buck Writer-in-Residence there in the Fall of 2017. Many years ago, he was founder and editor of the poetry journal Kudzu and later was editor of The Devil’s Millhopper poetry magazine and press.  He also taught for fifteen years in the University of Nebraska Omaha Low-Res MFA Program in Creative Writing.  Born in Georgia and reared in South Carolina, he continues to live and write in the mysterious and beautiful foothills of southwest Virginia. 

Jim Peterson’s newest poetry collection is Towheaded Stone Thrower, his tenth book overall, including eight collections of poetry, a novel, and a collection of short stories.  Other recent books are The Sadness of Whirlwinds (stories, 2021), The Horse Who Bears Me Away (poems, 2020), and Speech Minus Applause (poems, 2019).  Several hundred of his poems and stories have been published in more than eighty journals and anthologies.  Peterson’s wife Harriet was a professional equestrian (teaching, training, competing).  Life among horses became a strong bonding element of their relationship.  Harriet died in September of a brain tumor in 2016.  His life with her (including her love of horses and her illness) became the subject of his latest poetry collection, which was listed as one of the year’s best poetry collections of 2025 by The California Review of Books. 

Find "Towheaded Stone Thrower" here from Press 53

Find Peterson's previous books here from Red Hen Press

"Wise, heartrending, and vulnerable, Jim Peterson’s Towheaded Stone Thrower is an ineffably beautiful collection of poems."

-Lee Ann Roripaugh, author of Tsunami vs. the Fukushima 50

"With exceptional lyric precision and evocative richness of detail, this collection reveals what love offers, what it costs, and 'the essential lying beneath it all.'"

-Claire Bateman, author of Wonders of the Invisible World

"If you’re looking for poems that are authentic, well-crafted, and often breathtaking, you’ve arrived."

-William Trowbridge, author of Father and Son