Meet the Author
Anne Poarch grew up the youngest of five in the sandhills of North Carolina. Her mother and sister taught her the fine art of making a home, the equal beauty in shelling fresh peas or folding a crisply laundered sheet, while her father and brothers taught her how to paint, fish, and garden…to be outside and ramble the woods. After graduating cum laude from Wake Forest University in 1991, Anne traveled to Paris, where she worked as an au pair for the Picasso family, and attended the University of Paris, Sorbonne. After her year-long sojourn abroad, she returned to live and work in Richmond, Virginia, where she lives today with her husband and two sons.
Anne worked for twenty-two years in the financial services industry as an institutional salesperson and financial advisor before leaving to start her own company and pursue her creative interests. As founder of Basket & Bike, a bicycle tour company offering bicycle excursions and rentals along the Virginia Capital Trail in Richmond and Williamsburg, she wants to empower people to connect with the land and their communities by promoting a leisurely bicycle lifestyle. Her company gives back a portion of every tour to a rotating conservation cause. Anne is a sustaining member of the Junior League of Richmond, Reveille United Methodist Church, the Woman’s Club, and the Tuckahoe Garden Club of Westhampton, a member club of the Garden Club of Virginia and the Garden Club of America.
Details
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 76
ISBN: 978-1-9399308-7-3
Release date: April 25, 2017
Endorsements
“Anne Poarch’s lyrical appreciation of nature, winged and otherwise, charms and inspires, while her meditations encourage us to slow down, look closer and love deeper. Read it a poem at a time or all at once, and you will surely, like me, step a little lighter.”
~ Dean King, nationally best-selling author of Skeletons on the Sahara and The Feud
“Reading Anne Poarch’s Flight makes me want to take a long walk in the woods. Not later, but right now. While the butterflies are flying, which they do with grace throughout this tender book.”
~ Phyllis Theroux, author of The Journal Keeper and Giovanni’s Light
“In her visually stunning, jewel-like poetry, Anne Poarch creates refreshing moments of solitude and appreciation for both the natural world around us, and for the personal relationships that sustain us. Her lush cadence is infused with images of the Virginia landscape, and the Southern backgrounds of her life and experience. In my mind’s eye, I can see Thomas Jefferson reading Anne’s poetry with a smile on his face.”
~ Heath Hardage Lee, author of Winnie Davis, Daughter of the Lost Cause and the upcoming The Reluctant Sorority
“Reading Anne Poarch’s poetry is like opening an unexpected gift, tender, hopeful, and deeply real. She beautifully takes you on a journey of the spirit. It made me want to have the same experiences. Like her poem, Winter Robin, you might think it is just a lovely poem about a robin, but it is so much more…”
~ Mary Kathryn Holden Woodward, Virginia artist
“Anne Poarch is a brave writer who is deeply committed to exploring the world through her poetry. Her acutely personal verses are both touching and inspiring.”
~ Ellen Firsching Brown, co-author of Margaret Mitchell’s ‘Gone With the Wind’: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood
Meet the Illustrator
Sander Gibson, the author’s brother, was born in Laurinburg, North Carolina. Having developed a passion for art early in life, he entered East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina as an art major; attended Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida; and was awarded a BFA in Painting and Printmaking at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Additionally, he completed coursework at the Lyme Academy of Art, Old Lyme, Connecticut and North Carolina State University’s School of Design for Architecture. He has studied with sculptor Peter Agostini and portrait painter Aaron Shickler.
Sander has taught classes in painting, life-drawing, etching, and sculpture. He participated in the Third Century Artist Program of the North Carolina Arts Council in the late seventies. Besides one-man exhibitions, his work has been included in the North Carolina Annual Artists Exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Annual Artists Exhibition at the Fayetteville Museum of Art, and the Raleigh Fine Arts Society Exhibition at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina. His work is included in private and corporate collections in this country, the West Indies, England, and the Middle East.
Sixteen years her senior, Sander affectionately referred to his younger sister Anne as his “little flower” or “prickly pear,” depending on her mood.
Sander lives with his wife and daughter in Blowing Rock, North Carolina.
