Les Butchart

John Leslie Butchart is a Southern author, family man, business owner and filmmaker working out of Greensboro, North Carolina. His poetry, short stories and novels reflect the influence of authors such as Ron Rash, James Seay, John Logan, Ray Carver, Nathaniel West, John Kennedy Toole, Flannery O'Connor and James Agee.

John attended UNC-Chapel Hill, where he studied with James Seay and Louis Rubin. After majoring in filmmaking, he worked in advertising for over 20 years before starting his own filmmaking business, Highway 29 Motion Pictures, which he runs with his wife Susan and son Lucas.

John wrote and directed a feature motion picture entitled "Swimming in a Lake of Fire," inspired by Flannery O'Connor and the films of the Coen Brothers; and "The Hive," an epic murder mystery produced as a web series.

John's first love is poetry, but his output since 2005 has been primarily novels. His novels, THE MUSIC WE'RE BORN REMEMBERING, SONS OF NOAH and ELYANA, are forthcoming from Fugitive Poets Press. His first book from Fugitive, HOME MOVIE, is a collection of poetry and short stories on a wide range of subjects, a "nightstand book that continues to surprise night after night, like a good lover."

He credits Wildacres Writers Workshop with his surge in productivity since 2005. He first attended the workshop as a documentary producer, but as he videotaped the instructors, an old, almost dead literary ember was fanned into flame. He went home and wrote a historical Christian novel (an "epic work-in-progress"), then wrote THE MUSIC WE'RE BORN REMEMBERING as a complete change of pace. THE MUSIC follows the coming-to-maturity of a country girl named Claire McGill, mother of two, victim of spouse abuse, who takes a poetry writing class at the community college. Once her mind "catches fire," she reaches a new level of awareness and finds new strength to change her life.

After his own awakening to the potential of creative writing, John began collecting old poems, writing some new ones, and polishing eight stories (many of them flash fiction pieces) to create an extremely eclectic book called HOME MOVIE, with the goal of "putting all of that older stuff to bed." The book includes poems about filmmaking, marriage, alcoholism, faith, nature, the Civil War, and many other subjects.

"Les approaches poetry and novels with the eyes of a filmmaker, and he approaches filmmaking with the heart of a poet," says old friend and writing colleague Vince Lewis. "That gives his work its distinctive voice."

As for trivia, John is currently experimenting with a "Facebook novel" entitled THIS SIDE OF SOMEWHERE ELSE, using the nom de plume "Tyler Elkin." He explains, "THIS SIDE started as a fluke. It was the name of a novel written by the creative writing teacher in my novel THE MUSIC WE'RE BORN REMEMBERING, but as I began to think about what kind of novel Tyler would write, I decided to try writing it, and the result is a work-in-progress Facebook novel."

"I am a big fan of good writing workshops, tough critiques, and aggressive revision in general. I spend countless hours revising, always looking for missed opportunities as well as mistakes to fix. Recently, I've been involved in Red Lemonade, an online critiquing resource, and some of the input I received there was incredibly helpful in the final draft of THE MUSIC WE'RE BORN REMEMBERING.

John has also written more than a dozen screenplays, including some that are included in the equity film funds being brought out by New River Releasing (a company he co-owns), in conjunction with IndieFilmEquities.com.

He recently completed the novel SONS OF NOAH, an endtimes "secular Christian novel," about "three men who are chosen by God to lead the world through the endtimes ... whether they want to or not."

He is currently working on the final draft of a novel called ELYANA about a dirt poor mountain girl who was raised in the wilds of West Virginia by an actual witch, and who runs away to find friends, a new life and love in Beckley, WV.