Philip Belcher is the Vice President of Programs for The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina in Asheville and the author of The Flies and Their Lovely Names, selected by Kwame Dawes as the winner of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative chapbook prize and published by Stepping Stones Press. A graduate of Furman University, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and Duke University School of Law (JD), he also earned an MFA in Poetry from Converse College and is the recipient of both the Porter Fleming Prize in Poetry and Shenandoah’s Carter Prize for the Essay. Belcher’s poems and critical prose have appeared in numerous journals, including The Southeast Review, Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, Passages North, Fugue, The Southern Quarterly, and Asheville Poetry Review. He also served as an Advisory and Contributing Editor for Shenandoah.