Honoring Carroll Dale Short by Ramey Channell

Honoring Carroll Dale Short by Ramey Channell

Wherever he is, we wait. We listen. We love him here.

Sometimes in the course of ordinary everyday life, we come across an individual who is neither ordinary nor everyday. I was in awe of Dale Short from the moment I met him. I was in a creative writing class at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2004 and he was the judge for the prestigious Barksdale Maynard Award for fiction. Dale selected my short story, “Voltus Electricalus and Strata Illuminata” as the winner of the competition, an honor for which I’m still thrilled and very grateful. I’ll never forget my first glimpse of Carroll Dale Short as he sat at the front of the auditorium with professors, instructors, and a few other well known Alabama authors. He looked like someone who would be a joy to know.

And as years passed and I met Dale at various workshops and writers conferences, I learned that my first impression of him was one hundred percent accurate. Friendly, open, supportive, and generous, he truly was immensely talented and always a joy to know.

Carroll Dale Short, beloved Walker County, Alabama author, passed away on August 2nd, 2024, at the age of 73. Dale was a prolific writer whose fiction and non-fiction works have been published in Redbook, The New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek, and many others. Dale’s published books include the novel The Shining, Shining Path, nonfiction I Left My Heart in Shanghi, Alabama: Essays on Home and Place, A Migration of Clowns: Poems and Essays, and short story collection Turbo’s Very Life.

Others who knew and loved Dale, and benefited greatly from his creative influence, have sincere words to share about his friendship, endearing presence, and unique talent.

Donovan Short, Dale’s son, had this to say:

You’d think it’d become old hat being part of his family—but the truth is, I was likely more enthralled by his work than the average reader. I got to watch his process first hand—seeing his knack for listening and observation, and turning the ordinary moments of life into the extraordinary when they hit the page. With age and illness, his ‘voice’ subsided in these last several years, and after he passed it’s been a treasure for me to go back through his writing, to ‘hear’ him again. Although he was known for his fiction, there’s a good bit of autobiography in disguise mixed in there as well. We talked a bit in his last days about my desire to preserve his work, and his view was pretty simple— “If it was any good, it’ll preserve itself.”

I suspect it will, because it was.

Daniel Gaddy, Managing Editor at Endeavor Business Media, recalls:

What I remember most about Dale is how much he encouraged folks. That’s how I was introduced to him: an email he sent complimenting one of my first columns at the Daily Mountain Eagle, the hometown newspaper for both of us. I thanked him, of course, but I assumed he was just a thoughtful reader. After mentioning it in passing to a few people, I learned that this guy was seriously a big deal. Not only was Dale a published author and writing teacher, he was also a public radio contributor. He even wrote a book on writing! After Dale and I corresponded through email and Facebook a bit more, I asked him to start a podcast with me in 2012, a couple of years before everyone had a podcast. When I say we started a podcast, I mean I would stop by Dale’s house to record it, and he would operate the equipment, edit the audio, and publish it to Apple’s podcast platform (I helped with the Facebook page, though!).

The podcast only lasted a few months, but for those few months I got one-on-one time with one of the best writing coaches in the country. He always made me feel like I had every right to be sitting with a local legend, talking about ‘active voice’ or ‘the Oxford comma.’

That is the best way that I can honor him. To seek out writers close to me and flood them with praise.

T.K. Thorne, Alabama author, says:

I loved Dale's book The Shining, Shining Path. When I read it, I knew we were kindred spirits. Dale was an excellent journalist, and he was kind enough to give my book, Noah’s Wife, a read and review.

Jay McClendon, medical writer, fiction writer, poet, remembers:

I was a creative writing major at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham and went on to study journalism at Auburn and to have subsequent careers in writing. Dale was one of my teachers and mentors at ASFA and UAB, and later, my friend. He taught me a lot about writing and photography, but also way more than that. Kindness, compassion, a reverence of the written word, of Place, and to never forget or turn your back on your people or the land you call home. With Dale, you always felt heard and seen; not to be trite, but like he was listening to you and only to you. You had his attention, you know?

I wrote a vignette about catching lightning bugs, I think in 10th grade, and as was his practice, he recorded his critique on cassette (Hey, it was a long time ago!) And every single word of it was positive and constructive. And kind. I don't remember a thing about my little vignette, but I remember to this day, decades later, some of what he said about my writing on that tape. I saved that tape through college and well into the first part of my career, until it got lost in a move.

Whenever I'd come home, decimated and tired -- beat and beaten -- from a rough day at school or in the newsroom, I'd play that tape, and it'd help me get myself back together and remember what I came to do.

Woni Lawrence, writer and longtime friend, says:

It’s so hard for me to describe Dale. He was my friend, just as he was a friend to so many. Always loving, always helpful, he saw the good in everybody. He loved his community, and his community loved him. He never hid his vulnerabilities, speaking out on the struggles he had with depression with no sense of shame or embarrassment. In his poem “For a Friend Coming Home,” he said, in part: “Listen - we love you here.”

Wherever he is, we wait. We listen. We love him here.

Ramey Channell is the author of three novels: Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge, The Witches of Moonlight Ridge, and The Treasure of Moonlight Ridge, and children’s picture book, Mice from the Planet Zimlac. Ramey’s poems and stories have been published by Aura Literary Arts Review, ASPS, Birmingham Arts Journal, Ordinary and Sacred as Blood: Alabama Women Speak, Belles Letters 2, Well Read Magazine, and many other collections.