Michael K. Brantley is Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and the Elizabeth H. Jordan Chair of Southern Literature. He teaches creative writing, honors research, literature, and journalism courses and directs the visiting writer series as well as the Homegrown Writers series, which he founded. He leads the WriteOn creative writing pathway at Barton, and was the Lincoln Financial Teaching Excellence Faculty Member of the Year in 2023.
Brantley is the author of five nonfiction books. Captain Otway Burns: Tar Heel Privateer, Legislator, and Naval Hero of the War of 1812 is out in late 2025 from McFarland & Company. Galvanized: The Odyssey of a Reluctant Carolina Confederate (University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, 2020) was nominated for the Sam Ragan Old North State Nonfiction Award and the Wiley-Silver Prize. A Southern Season: Rural Stories (Black Rose, 2023) was nominated for the Sam Ragan Old North State Nonfiction Award and his first book, Memory Cards: Portraits from a Rural Journey (Black Rose, 2015) reached No. 1 on Amazon in Nonfiction in 2016. It’s a Time in the Land: The Best of the Soap Box (2021) is a collection of his award-winning newspaper columns, which have appeared in The Nashville Graphic for nearly 30 years.
Before coming to Barton, Brantley worked as a journalist, editor, and professional photographer. He holds a Master Photographer Craftsman degree from the Professional Photographers of America, and his photographs have won state, regional, and international awards and three Fuji Masterpiece Awards. He continues to write for national magazines and has published a number of essays, short stories, and poems in literary journals in the U.S. and internationally.
His research and writing interests include American and North Carolina history, baseball, music, and Southern culture, food, and folklore. Brantley is a recipient of an Archie Davis Fellowship from the North Caroliniana Society and has served as chairman of the North Carolina Writers Conference.