J. Stephen Rhodes writes about living on the edges between security and fear, guilt and grace, as well as between country and city, and prosperity and scarcity. In addition to his four poetry collections, his poems have appeared in over seventy literary journals.

Regarding his poems and essays, he comments, “I want to write in a way that offers hope for people like myself who are more than a little overwhelmed by modern life. I want to be honest about the brokenness that besets us, but I am also looking for beauty in the midst of that brokenness.”

Steve Rhodes grew up in Atlanta in the 1950’s and 1960’s in a white-painted brick house on a quiet street in a moderately well-to-do neighborhood. “Before 1960, I thought of my family as a ‘Leave It To Beaver’ kind of family. The 1960’s yanked me all over the place: warehouse work, a gruesome private school, bad acne, ditch-digging, a mother who drank too much, being kicked out of Boy Scouts, “God is dead,” Campus Crusade for Christ, VISTA, working with developmentally challenged children, and service as a conscientious objector working in a hospital during the Viet Nam War.”

The subsequent three and a half decades have only served to widen this exposure to different worlds: pastoral work at an inner-city church and two small town churches in the deep south, research in Appalachia and Central America, stints as a seminary dean and as the co-director of a non-profit organization.

In addition to a Ph.D. in Theological Studies from Emory University, Rhodes received his M. Div. from Columbia Theological Seminary, his B.A. from Eckerd College, and his M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine -Stonecoast.

He is Canon Poet of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in Charleston, South Carolina.