Fred First's Biography

With first at MS in Biology and 12 years in the classroom followed by second MS in Physical Therapy and a dozen years in the clinic, Fred First began writing to a weblog, Fragments from Floyd, in 2002 in a temporary sabbitical from what he did for a living to contemplation about the where of his life. That early writing about place lead first to more than 2 dozen essays on the Roanoke NPR station, then regular columns in two local papers, a memoir, Slow Road Home~a Blue Ridge Book of Days in 2006 and a second book, What We Hold In Our Hands: a Slow Road Reader to be published in 2009.