Glenn Gannaway-Playwright
Glenn Gannaway grew up in Southwest Virginia and has spent most of his life there. He has made his home in Wise County since 1985. He was attracted to the written word from an early age and dabbled in writing as a child and teen, then majored in journalism at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
While he was a newspaper reporter and editor for a total of about 17 years, Glenn has worked other jobs, including 18 years with AT&T's Virginia Relay Center in Norton, Va. and an enlistment with the Virginia Army National Guard. It was during his time with AT&T that Glenn became involved in amateur theater: he took a class in creative writing offered by the AT&T-Communications Workers of America employee growth program. Instructor Vivian Blevins told her students that not only would they write short stories, poems, memoirs and stage sketches, they would perform them before an audience.
From that group effort, Glenn became interested in theater and has participated in about 60 productions over the past 20 years, doing everything from acting to directing to singing, with some set construction and floor sweeping thrown in. Over the past five years or so, he has circled back to his early literary interests by writing a handful of short plays, which have been staged by the Appalachia Cultural Arts Council both at its center in Appalachia, Va. and at the Natural Tunnel State Park Amphitheater. Glenn lives in Big Stone Gap, Va. with his long-time companion Vicky and Bumbee, the couple's beloved rescue dog.