“Artifacts,” by UTC Scholar Laurie Perry Vaughen

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga provides an open, digital platform through UTC Scholar for research, creative works and publications completed through UTC. This allows for the availability of numerous articles, theses, dissertations, works of literary art and more.

Chattanooga poet Laurie Perry Vaughen notes that poets and archaeologists move from the smallest shards to imagine a larger cultural landscape in her essay and selected poems titled “Artifacts,” now published by the online archive. Vaughen graduated in May with her Master of Arts in English: Creative Writing from UTC and also holds a BS in sociology and anthropology from UTC. She is nearing completion of her MFA in poetry at the Sewanee School of Letters.

Vaughen is the recipient of the James Dickey Award from Emory’s Lullwater Review in Atlanta and the Amon Liner Award from the Greensboro Review at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her poems have also appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Poetry Miscellany, Chattahoochee Review, Cold Mountain Review and Laurel Review. Before pursuing her literary career full-time, Vaughen worked as a writer and photographer at newspapers and magazines in Tennessee and Georgia–notably, as editor of EnviroLink Southeast (Williams Publishing) and managing editor of One magazine at Unum, a Fortune 500 Company.

Click here for Vaughen’s essay and poems, “Artifacts.”