Ramey Channell

Ramey Channell

Visual Arts

 205-699-4653

 6593 Lynn Ave, Leeds, AL 35094

Individual artist/author: 

Ramey Channell was born in Leeds, graduated from Leeds High School, and is currently employed at Leeds Jane Culbreth Library. Ramey has been painting and writing stories and poetry since childhood. Ramey’s early poems were published in VOX, Leeds High School’s literary magazine. Her first national publication was her poem Prerequisite, published by Scholastic Press shortly after she graduated from high school. Her poems, short stories and children’s stories have won numerous awards and have been published by Alabama Writers Conclave, Alabama State Poetry Society, Aura Literary Arts Review, Birmingham Arts Journal, Rivers Edge Publishing, the Tahana Whitecrow Foundation, and many others. Her poem, Statonice Speaks to Antiochus on His Deathbed, was awarded a prize by the National League of American Pen Women, and her short story, Voltus Electricalus and Strata Illuminata, won the Barksdale-Maynard Award for fiction. Ramey served many years on the Board of Directors of The Society for the Preservation of American Indian Culture, founded by Dr. H.L. Martin. She has worked in an array of occupations, including portrait artist, sign-painter, musician, art and music teacher, free-lance craft and sewing designer, legal secretary, museum docent and armor-maker’s apprentice. Ramey says her inspiration for her recently published novel, Sweet Music on Moonlight Ridge, a fictional account of a little girl named Lily Claire and her cousin, Willie T., came from her own childhood experiences, growing up on Dunnavant Mountain and in Leeds. “My cousin and I lived and played like wild children of the woods, and we never imagined that there was any life or any home more desirable than our own.