P
ROXIMITY is produced by three writers:
Carrie Kilman is a writer and activist based in Madison, WI. Carrie’s work lends focus to people living in the margins: children crossing the U.S./Mexico border each day to get to school; unemployed factory workers in New England; protesters at a Deep South abortion clinic. Her writing has appeared in In These Times magazine, Yankee magazine, Alternet.org, Teaching Tolerance magazine, and the anthology, Youth Renewing the Countryside. Carrie is the author of Epitaph for the Living, a memoir about voice, family and displacement. She received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College and a graduate certificate from the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.
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Towles Kintz moved to Atlanta, Georgia in 1999, after graduating from Davidson College. There, she took various jobs that paid the bills but failed to feed her passion; after working for two years as a compliance officer for an investment firm – and writing snatches of poetry in free moments at her cubicle – she decided there was more to life than making money. In 2007, Towles graduated from Goucher College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction writing.
Towles’ work has been published in the AWP’s Writer’s Chronicle, as well as in other, little known publications, including regional magazines, industry newsletters and business magazines. (What? She still has to pay some bills.) The writers who have had the greatest influence on her style include Annie Dillard, Frederick Buechner, Mary Oliver, James Agee, Joseph Mitchell and E.B. White. In addition to her commercial ventures, Towles is currently writing a book-length work of narrative journalism, set in Atlanta, about three homeschooling families.
She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Andrew, daughter, Claire, and loyal companion, Ivy.
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Maggie Messitt is an American writer and editor based in Hoedspruit, South Africa, a small village tucked between 2.2 million hectares of bushveld and the Drakensberg Escarpment. A graduate of Goucher College’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction program, Maggie is the author of Today: The True Stories of One Village and Three Lives in Rural South Africa. She is currently hard at work on her second book-length immersion project — a multi-threaded narrative framed inside Kruger National Park and focused on the challenges behind elephant and reserve management. Maggie is also the owner of Transfrontiers Wildlife Walking Safaris, and the Founding Director of Amazwi, a non-profit media arts organization for African women.
She lives in a small cottage along Lerato Dam with her two dogs, Shinga and Moya.
