Every once in a while, I will pull out an article of clothing from among my clean clothes and find my first initial and my last name written on it and I will think, Oh yes, that’s from when I was in the rehabilitation center after my second major hemorrhagic stroke.

 After teaching English in four North Carolina high schools for over thirty years, Phyllis Stump found a new career as a playwright and actor as she brings her one woman show, “Thy Call Me Aunt Orlene,” the story of a Virginia midwife, to schools, retirement homes, museums, theatres, and the Blue Ridge Parkway. She is also the author of two books of poetry, The Heart Knows, which won the Oscar M. Young Award from the North Carolina Poetry Council in 1980, and Walking the Gunnysack Trail: A Mountain Journey in Poetry.  In the summer of 2010 her first novel, Called: the Story of a Mountain Midwife, was published.  She currently has another book of poetry, The Heart Knows More, in the works.

She has been a finalist in the Reynolds Price Short Story Contest, sponsored by Salem College and a third place winner in the Sherwood Anderson Short Story Contest, held in Marion, Virginia.  For her master’s thesis in liberal arts at Wake Forest University, she completed a novel, Pictures from the Past Imperfect, which she hopes will find a publisher one day.  The inspiration to write, whether poetry, fiction, or nonfiction, is the motivation that keeps her constantly on the move, searching for that “something new, something unique” that most of humankind tend to overlook.

Mrs. Stump and her husband divide their time between their two homes in Lexington, North Carolina, and off the Blue Ridge Parkway in Carroll County, Virginia.  She and her husband have three children, six grandchildren and a multitude of hobbies, including nature study, travel, reading, gardening, and crafts. They have been involved in mission trips to China, Brazil and Belize with an emphasis on working with children. In 2009, she experienced a life-changing event, a massive stroke in her left brain.  With the help of her doctors and her family, her husband and her children, she daily continues through the recovery process.