"Since his earliest years in Birmingham, Alabama, Fred First has called several places in the southern Appalachians home. An Auburn graduate with a MS in Zoology and an avid naturalist, he first moved to Virginia in 1975 to teach at Wytheville Community College. In a mid-life career change, he earned a masters degree in Physical Therapy and practiced in that field in North Carolina for six years before moving--permanently, he says--to Floyd County in 1997.

In 2002, his personal focus shifted from what he did for a living to where it was that he lived. He continues to explore the beauties and perplexities of his rural Blue Ridge valley in words and images, including a daily photo-journal called "Fragments from Floyd." Much of his writing and pondering turns to sense of place and belonging, especially as it relates to the Appalachian Mountains.

Fred is active in his Floyd County community, as member of the Floyd Writers Circle and is a board member at the Jacksonville Center, Floyd's Arts Center and arts incubator. Recent speaking engagements include guest lecturer at Virginia Tech (Appalachian Cultures class, Sept 04) and spoken word readings given locally in Floyd, including Floyd Fest 2004. He has participated as a student at the Highlands Summer Conference in Radford and at the JC Campbell Folk School (2003) and presented his "photomemoir" at the Appalachian Studies Conference at Radford University in March, 2005.

Fred is a regular essayist on Roanoke's NPR station (WVTF). His works are published in various places including Blue Ridge Country Magazine, Petlife, Greenprints, Birmingham Arts Journal, Flow (Glassblowers trade magazine) and Nantahala Review (Feb 2005). He writes a regular column, A Road Less Traveled, in the Floyd Press. Fred's photographs have been featured in promotional materials for the New River Valley Land Trust and the Floyd County Chamber of Commerce. Fred teaches biology at Radford University as adjunct faculty while he pursues his interests in writing and nature/rural landscape photography. He has also re-entered clinical work, part-time, as a physical therapist at a privately-run outpatient clinic not far from home."

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