Bio

Hi,
Thanks for checking out my site. If you have a second, let me know what you think of it, okay?

I'm the guy in the picture, Phillip Gardner. I was born in Goldsboro, North Carolina and grew up about five miles away, in the country, near the Saulston crossroads. I attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where, with the help and support of some fine teachers, I began writing fiction. For a couple of years after college, I almost made a living as a musician, touring the Southeast playing Top-40 music before teaching composition and literature classes at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. I've taught English at Francis Marion University in Florence, South Carolina for longer than I can remember and along the way taught at Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee.

If you click on "Books and Stories," you'll see my collections of short stories, Someone To Crawl Back To, Somebody Wants Somebody Dead, Available Light, and The Future Never Lasts published by Boson Books and Bitingduck Press. Lamar University Literary Press published my fifth collection, where they come from where they hide. I'm a winner of the South Carolina Academy of Authors' Elizabeth Boatwright Coker Fellowship in Fiction, a Piccolo Spoleto Fiction Open and three-time South Carolina Fiction Project winner. My stories have appeared in the North American Review, New Delta Review, LIT, Interim, The Chattahoochee Review and anthologized in Inheritance: Selections from The South Carolina Fiction Project (Hub City Writers Project) and A Shared Voice (Lamar University Press). My work has been adapted to film, https://vimeo.com/palmettopictures, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A list of fiction publications is on the Acknowledgments page.

If you are a movie star or Hollywood producer or someone who for unknown reasons reads scripts or if you're just the curious type, you can preview four of my screenplays: Roadwork, a romantic comedy; Necessary Evils, a detective story; Buzz, a fish out of water comedy; You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling, a revenge tale; and Montezuma's Revenge, a spoof on 80's screwball comedies. If you want to invest, say, a couple hundred million dollars in one of these, you can call toll-free.

In the late 70s, my brother Michael and I began collaborating as songwriters for what would become PKM's debut album, Rock Erotica. Following the record's release, the power rock trio of Pee Wee Watson, Kenny Soule, and Michael Gardner played to sell-out audiences throughout the 80s.

In the early 90s, Kenny, Michael and I convened in Michael's Raleigh studio to focus on songwriting. Soon, Audley Freed and Robert Kearns joined our sessions. Audley, Robert, Kenny and Michael, seasoned, highly respected professionals, were excited about the new songs and eager to perform them. The result was The Gardners of Soule, and for two years we performed in North Carolina's top Rock clubs.

Throughout, Michael, Kenny and I remained first and foremost songwriters. Sixteen of our songs received Honorable Mention in Billboard's Annual Song Contest, and one was a semifinalist. But most of these songs were never performed before an audience and have never been available to the public.

In 2010, Michael was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. To recognize his achievements and talents as songwriter, performer, engineer and producer, fans can own the Gardners of Soule catalogue, four cds of songs. Click here to see the lyrics of each.

For lots and lots of reasons, I am, most days, the happiest guy in America. And teaching college English has surely been a big part of that happiness. I was the founding director of Francis Marion University's Writing Center, where for a dozen years I worked one-on-one with hundreds, if not thousands, of student writers, devoted colleagues, and faculty and staff from across the university. Most of my scholarship is related to college composition, but I also teach introductory literature, screenwriting, and sometimes fiction workshops. If you found my site because of our shared interest in teaching and learning, go to the "Teaching" page for more info.

Thanks again for stopping by.