Charles Gillispie is a counselor who specializes in the use of creative writing as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral therapy. He has published articles describing his work in Addiction Professional, Arizona Together, journal of Poetry Therapy, and Therapeutic Recreation Journal. Charles has received fellowships and grants from the Tucson Pima Arts Council and the Arizona Commission on the Arts in support of his work with writing and therapy. He is a founding member of the San Pedro River Pilgrims, a backpacking club dedicated to the pursuit of spirituality through wilderness adventure.

Books by Charles Gillispie:

About The Way We Go On:

"In 'What Rain Does,' Charles Gillispie names the Four Directions as 'my past, my future,/ my mind and my mood.' This is an excellent humane nature we need. Gillispie's poems create spaces for people to accept each other, find work, make do—knowing that compromise opens the door to beauty, and that the night outside is very cold and real."
—Wendy Burk

"Plainspoken, unassuming, the poems in Charles Gillispie's first collection record the pain of the everyday, and the beauty, the hope. Though the vision is often dark, the language here is so alive with metaphor that the reader walks away with a sense of life's ultimate vitality-and possibility. Gillispie's is a world in which "Jays bully the light," "the sky . . . is interviewed by clouds;" a world in which "the smallest word can open a window." The Way We Go On is a large-hearted, accomplished debut."
—Boyer Rickel