Order All the way through Here

“More than a muscle, the heart / breathes, leaving nothing behind.”

KB Ballentine teaches creative writing, theatre arts, and literature to high school and college students, her home nestled at the base of the Appalachian Mountains in Tennessee. She has an M.A. in Writing from the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Poetry from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Her work has appeared in numerous journals and publications, including Atlanta Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Linnet’s Wings, Crab Orchard Review, Alehouse, Tidal Basin Review, Haight–Ashbury Literary Journal, The Sigh Press, and MO: Writings from the River.

Ballentine’s poetry collections include All the Way Through (Sheila-Na-Gig 2024) Spirit of Wild (Blue Light Press 2023) Edge of the Echo (Iris Press 2021) The Light Tears Loose (Blue Light Press 2019) Almost Everything, Almost Nothing (Middle Creek Publishing 2017) The Perfume of Leaving (Blue Light Press Book Award 2016) What Comes of Waiting (Blue Light Press Book Award 2013) Fragments of Light (Celtic Cat Publishing 2009) Gathering Stones (Celtic Cat Publishing 2008)

Her work also appears in several anthologies: Women Speak: Volume Ten (2025); Writing the Land: Wanderings II (2024); All the Women Came and Sang (2024); Tennessee Voices Anthology (2024); Rhyme-N-Chatt 25th Anniversary Anthology (2024); Women Speak: Volume Nine (2024); Art of Chestnut Review: Volume One (2024); Tennessee Voices Anthology (2024); Women Speak: Volume Eight: (2023); Why We Write: RNC (2023); Tennessee Voices Anthology (2023); White Stag: Spirit Anthology (2023); LOVE Anthology (2023); Women Speak: Volume 8 (2022); Appalachia (Un)Masked (2022); I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing (2022); The Strategic Poet (2021); Women Speak: Volume 7 (2021); Pandemic Puzzle Poems (2021); The Mountain (2021); Pandemic Evolution (2021); In Plein Air (2017); Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017); In God's Hands (2017); River of Earth and Sky: Poems for the Twenty-first Century (2015); Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI:  Tennessee (2013); and Southern Light: Twelve Contemporary Southern Poets (2011).