Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, Anne Bailey spent her early years with a steady diet of poetry and Chopin in a setting replete with Southern creeks and open fields. Her mother, Nancy Bailey, was librarian at the prep school Anne attended, and her love of words, books, poetry and storytelling grew. She left Birmingham to attend Barnard College, Columbia University. Anne wanted to be an English major, but her father told her that it was not practical, so she chose East Asian Studies and spent her junior year abroad in China.
Anne pursued a career in business, helping to grow her father's printing business, Southern Label Company. On the side, she wrote poems, painted, drew, wrote songs and completed an MFA in Book Arts. She performed in avant-garde productions and enjoyed seeing one of her hand-printed books in a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY, NY.
Soon Anne was married, with a baby boy, Edward Mostoller. She continued in sales at Southern Label Company. When Edward was 10, she founded Wise Word Arts, a company in which she told world stories, offered workshops and performances, and sold art and sculpture. Five years later she returned to sales at Southern Label Company, as she wanted to earn more to deal with the rigors of Edward's high school years.
Anne was awarded an Alabama State Council of the Arts grant to go to Tepoztlan Mexico, to study with a native storyteller. She also won an award from the Alabama Poetry Society, and was published in the collection, Sacred as Blood: Alabama Women Speak. She performed her work "I Dream a Mama" at the Birmingham Museum of Art, was guest storyteller at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, at theaters across Alabama, and for visiting tourists. She performed improv comedy at the Comedy Club in Birmingham.
In 2007, Anne started on an MA in English (at last!) with a concentration in Creative Writing (Poetry). In 2009, Anne graduated having completed "Cold Stone, White Lily", a collection of 27 poems written from the point of view of Anne Wyngfield, a 14th Century English anchoress. She was awarded the Ireland Scholarship and was a member of Tau Delta, the English Honor Society. Anne is currently working on a publisher for the work.
The poems themselves are fully realized but are even more impressive in the context of this historical set of possibilities and event.
-Diane Wakoski
