Featured Writers
Meet Cliff Hightower
A journalist, novelist, writer, blogger, and poet on Medium
This story aims to introduce an accomplished writer contributing to Illumination Integrated Publications on Medium.
Cliff Hightower is a journalist, novelist, short story writer, blogger, and poet.
Cliff has spent more than two decades as a newspaper reporter, from Florida to Georgia to Tennessee. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Tennessee.
Cliff began his writing career when he was 13 years old and has been writing for more than 30 years. He first won an award for short story writing when he was 18 years old and a senior in high school.
Shortly after graduating high school, Cliff went into the U.S. Army and spent three years in the service as an airborne infantryman with a U.S. Army Ranger unit and served in Fort Bill, Texas, and Dahlonega, Georgia.
After the service, Cliff went to college, where he began writing again, concentrating on literary fiction and poetry.
During college, he found a passion for journalism and found that he could “get paid to write.”
He graduated college and worked in Knoxville, Tennessee; Tampa, Florida’ Chattanooga, Tennessee; Nashville, Tennessee, and currently, works in Kingsport, Tennessee as a reporter amid the rolling hills and mountains.
He has self-published a novel, “Canaan Mountain,” available on Amazon. He also has a second novel written and is looking for an agent to try and traditionally publish.
He also has plans soon to self-publish a second book that will contain memoirs, essays, short stories, and poetry.
Cliff has two children, Carolina and Kellen, and is married to Jama. He has already found one of his children, Kellen, following in his footsteps and writing as well.
There are many passions and hobbies Cliff pursues outside writing, including playing guitar, hiking, fishing, and mountain biking. Nature and the outdoors are very important to him, and it is in much of his writing.
His influences throughout the years include Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, Jack London, Stephen King, Walt Whitman, and Allan Ginsberg.
He is currently working on a third fiction book, a Southern Gothic thriller set in the hills of Appalachia.
We’d like to give a quick taste of Cliff’s interesting and engaging stories on Medium.
Selected Stories of Cliff Hightower
Write With Emotion, Feeling
How to Find Peace Within Yourself to Find Your Writing
How Town: A Prose Poem
Hotel Alcoholonia: You Can Check In, But You Can Never Leave
You Need to Embrace the Writing Revolution
Three ways to overcome writing block
Pick your poison, content creator or storyteller
You just got rejected, what now?
How I’m Gaining 100 Followers, My Way
Your Inner Child Wants to Write
Thank you for reading stories of Cliff Hightower and following his account.
You can contact Cliff on Illumination’s Slack Workspace for collaboration.
Update on Featuring Writers
We feature our writers in story and interview format.
For example we recently featured Lady Dr. Gabriella Korosi Meet Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi on Medium and interviewed Lawson Wallace An Interview with Lawson Wallace.
We plan to introduce published authors. For example, one of our accomplished writers with 15 published books is Melinda Blau. She is a source of inspiration for our writing and reading community.
Dr Mehmet Yildiz, our chief editor also interviews published authors and many writers contributing to our publications. For example, he recently interviewed a published author Keri Mangis.
You can check interviewed writers in this collection.
You might also checkout out profiles of editor compiled by ILLUMINATION-Curator
ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications has created a reading club. All Medium members are invited. If you are not a writer for our publications yet, you may request via this weblink. We will be delighted to include you in this club.
Helpful Resources for Writers and Readers
Starter Kit for Writers of ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications
Featured Stories by Editors on ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications
Invitation to Potential Writers
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