Moose, Ruth

Ruth Moose (1938- ), North Carolina writer; reference librarian at Pfeiffer College, 1988-1996; and, since 1996, teacher of creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ruth Moose worked as a free-lance writer, including a stint at the "Charlotte Observer," for which she was a regular columnist, and as poetry editor for the "Uwharrie Review" and "The Arts Journal."

In addition to numerous articles, poems, and stories that have appeared in magazines and newspapers, she has published four poetry and two short story collections. Moose is married to artist Talmadge Moose and has two sons.

Ruth Moose, a professional writer since 1969, was born on 24 August 1938 in North Carolina. Both Ruth and her future husband, Talmadge Moose, grew up in Stanly County, N.C. Ruth is the oldest of four children and the only girl. Her father, Ardie Morris, worked in a hardware store, and her mother, Vera Morris, was a homemaker.

Ruth Morris married artist Talmadge Moose after high school, and they raised two sons before she began work on a B.A. in English-Creative Writing Studies at Pfeiffer College (Pfeiffer University as of 1996) in Misenheimer, N.C., at age 45. She completed the B.A. degree in two and a half years. For 14 years, Moose was a poet-in-residence in North Carolina high schools and colleges. For several years, she also contributed a thrice-weekly column to the Charlotte News .

Moose began writing and selling short stories to the Charlotte Observer and Good Housekeeping as a free-lance author, eventually writing a monthly column for the Observer . In 1975, she helped form the Wednesday Writer's Workshop in Charlotte with Dannye Romine, a fellow writer and Charlotte Observer columnist. After earning a master's degree in library science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Ruth Moose held the position of reference librarian at Pfeiffer College, 1988-1996. There, she was also instrumental in organizing the Pfeiffer Friends of the Library. In 1996, Moose studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with poet Charles Edward Eaton and novelist Doris Betts. Since 1996, Moose has taught creative writing at UNC-CH.

Ruth Moose has published three books of poetry: Finding Things in the Dark (1982); Making the Bed (1995), for which she won the Oscar Arnold Young Award; and Smith Grove (1997). In addition, a 16-page section of her poems titled To Survive was published in Quintet, a 1981 collection of five poets' works produced by Bookmaker's Press in Kansas City, Mo. Two of Moose's short story collections have been published: The Wreath-Ribbon Quilt, first published in 1987 by St. Andrews Press, Laurinburg, N.C., and later in a second edition by August House, Little Rock, Ark., in 1989. In 1989, August House also published her second collection of short stories, Dreaming In Color . Her stories have been published in two other anthologies: Homecoming: The Southern Family in Short Fiction, produced by August House in 1990, and Twelve Christmas Stories by North Carolina Writers, which Moose also edited, published in Asheboro, N.C., by Down Home Press in 1997. One of Moose's poems and a recipe appear in the anthology There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays, published by Papier-Mache Press of California in 1997. Moose edited and has an article published in I Have Walked: Stories and Poems About Poverty, published in 1989 by the North Carolina Poverty Project.

Moose won three PEN Syndicated Awards for Short Fiction and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry in 1976. In addition to two National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1986 and 1987, Moose was awarded a fellowship to attend the McDowell Artists Colony in Peterborough, N.H., in 1994. Moose also received a Sam Ragan Fine Arts Award and won a Blumenthal Writers & Readers Series Competition in 1996.

Moose has two sons, Lyle Moose and Barry Moose. She and her husband designed, built, and lived in a house they named Witness Tree, from a Robert Frost poem and huge beech tree on the property. The house is located in part of the Uwharrie Range overlooking the Pee Dee River. She now lives in Pittsboro, N.C.