Sandee Gertz teaches in the English and Creative Writing programs and began teaching at Cumberland University in the Fall of 2016.  She teaches courses including English Composition 101/102, Intro to Literature, and Creative Writing courses with an emphasis on Poetry. 

Ms. Gertz is an award-winning poet and has been a writer publishing essays, articles, poems, and creative work for over twenty years.  She is the author of a full-length poetry collection, The Pattern Maker’s Daughter, published by Bottom Dog Press in 2012.  This book has been used in a variety of courses in universities in Pennsylvania, including Carnegie-Mellon University, The University of Pittsburgh, and Washington & Jefferson College where she was also a guest lecturer.  She was a 2000 recipient of a Pennsylvania Commonwealth Grant Fellowship for Poetry and the winner of the Sandburg-Livesay Award, as well as a Pushcart Prize nominee. She received her M.A. and M.F.A. from Wilkes University in 2012. 

After moving to Nashville from Western Pennsylvania in 2013, she has embraced the south and is currently working on a new poetry manuscript which incorporates much Tennessee research and has completed a memoir, “Some Girls Have Auras of Bright Colors” for which she is seeking publishing.  Ms. Gertz is currently completing a novel which is set in her hometown of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. She has a love and evident passion for writing and teaching, and is most excited to work with all CU students and to share this love of the English language. She is the former host of a Poetry Radio Show, “Everyday Poetry|” which aired on Radio Free Nashville and a past Writer in Residence at the Nashville Public Writers’ Rooms, awarded the Russell Churchwell Room for the December 2018/2019 term. She has a personal mission at CU to promote poetry and to bring it into the everyday lives of students and faculty. To that end, she initiated the Poet In Residence Series, sponsored by a Bell Family Grant, which has brought contemporary poets to campus over several semesters.

In addition to her writing career, Ms. Gertz spent eleven years as the founder and director of a non-profit arts center with a mission to ensure that all children and adults had full access to arts programming and creative expression, regardless of their ability to pay. Her activities at CU involve co-founding and hosting the Open Mic Series and the Black Box Creative Expression events including Creative Writing Wednesdays and Turn Out Tuesdays. 

Timothy Charles Davis helped co-write The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook (UGA Press). In 2015, The Hot Chicken Cookbook: The Fiery History and Red-Hot Recipes of Nashville’s Beloved Bird (Spring House Press/Blue Hills Press) was published. In its fifth printing, the book has been reviewed or otherwise mentioned in Time, The Washington Post, Southern Living, National Geographic, The New Yorker, and Food Republic, and was the subject of a feature on NPR’s Morning Edition. Davis’ partial publication credits include pieces for Southern Living, the anthology Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing, Salon.com, Mother Jones, First We Feast, Saveur, Christian Science Monitor, Travel + Life, Harp, Gastronomica and Oxford American. He is a former staff writer and food columnist at Creative Loafing in Charlotte, NC and Weekly Surge/The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, SC. He also contributed as an associate editor to Gravy, the official newsletter of the Oxford, Mississippi- based Southern Foodways Alliance. He has taught writing at Cumberland University, Belmont University, Nashville State Community College, Lipscomb University, Volunteer State Community College, and Watkins College of Art, Design + Film, as well as through Flowering Lotus Meditation Center. He is a Dharmacharya through Heartwood Refuge and Academy in Hendersonville, NC, which is a multi-lineage lay ordination program lead by the Venerable Dr. Panavatti Karuna. He is also a member of the Zen Peacemakers Order ministerial program, where he serves as a mentor/facilitator. A new (as yet untitled) book of meditations on cooking and spirituality is under contract to McFarland/Toplight and due in 2025.