A new collection of poems and prose by Department of English faculty members Tina Mozelle Braziel, MFA, and James Braziel, MFA, explores what it takes to do the hard work of making a home for themselves. It’s both a metaphor and the subject of their book, Glass Cabin, which was written in the Blount County house they built by hand.
They are quick to acknowledge their mentors and community of helpers. But they don’t shy away from the deeply personal investments they make in the tasks at hand, whether they’re telling their story or building their house. Keep in mind, this is back-to-basics homebuilding in the extreme: They used no contractors, no architects, no plans, plumbers, or bankers. With the exception of help from a few family members and friends, for the most part, it’s all them: They built in the rural Alabama woodlands on their own terms and timetable, with found materials. And they wrote.
“It seems that building a cabin by hand would be enough on its own, but it has taken the writing of what we’ve done to truly see what we have accomplished,” said Jim. “I often have to stop and ask myself, ‘How did we do this?’”
Jim, an associate professor in the Department of English, received his MFA from Bowling Green State University in 1992 and was recruited to UAB in 2010 to teach creative writing. Tina, originally from Pell City, holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon as well as a master’s degree in English from UAB. She is instrumental to UAB’s long-running annual Ada Long Creative Writing Workshop. She has worked with the summer workshop and its students since 2004 and has served as director since 2009.
The Braziels are writers and teachers through and through. And their one-of-a-kind cabin on Hydrangea Ridge in Blount County is a testament to their independence—and their interdependence—and how they approach life, labor, and love.
A 900-square-foot muse
Hydrangea Ridge is 30 miles northeast of Jim’s office in UAB’s bustling University Hall; he purchased the 10-acre parcel of land in 2011 for just $6,000. He knew building on it would be a challenge. But it marked a new chapter, and he had Tina by his side.
They started with salvaged glass panels from a South Georgia church—Jim’s father acquired those. And then a colleague at UAB, Jim Owens, offered up decommissioned power poles that came down in one of the tornadoes that ravaged central Alabama in 2011. They assembled more raw materials, plotted the homesite, and took it from there.
“The cabin is essentially one room, so we often write in the same space either inside the cabin or out on the deck,” said Tina. “Since part of our writing process is to read our work aloud, one of us will go outside or even out to the car to give the other some quiet.”
Along the way, they suffered splinters and chiggers and setbacks and storms. They slept in a tent pitched on the subfloor, showered at the gym, and imported water from neighboring towns and springs. But as time went by, they figured out how to make it work. They kept at it, one pane, one pole, one board at a time.
While they were building, Tina and Jim were also documenting. They shared their progress in a blog, Glass Cabin Diary. By the time the shelter was sound, they had a robust narrative, as well as the more functional but desirable parts of a house: clerestory windows, transoms, a sleeping loft with a skylight, a simple kitchen, a screened porch, and a deck.
The story of their build informed Tina’s previous collection of poetry, Known by Salt, published by Anhinga Press and winner of the 2017 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry. But their new collection of poetry and prose, released in 2024 by Pulley Press, is a reflection on the transitional time of building a home while also exploring their 900-square-foot muse and the inspiration it brought forth.
“When Pulley Press asked us to write a collection of poems with some prose in late 2022, we were thrilled,” said Tina. “Most of Glass Cabin was written last year, though we drew from poetry and prose that we had written earlier. To write a book that quickly, we wanted to make the process fun, so each of us wrote poems during the week and read them to each other over mimosas and waffles on Sundays.”
The Braziels have long been responsible for shaping the writing of many students on UAB’s campus. When their workday is done, they escape the Birmingham city limits and drive along Highway 79, winding through small towns and rural backcountry to get to the wooded homesite they have been tending for a decade and then some.
There are pages written by Jim and those by Tina, and the call and response within Glass Cabin is intimate, raw, and, at times, just a bit wary and beautiful all at once—just like life in the wild.
“Imagine a glass cabin standing atop a grid of wooden posts just down from the crest of a ridge, swallowed up by trees and birds and snakes and the mist that comes off a branch bed,” writes Jim. “Imagine labor intertwined with nature, intertwined with dancing, routine, and love. That’s us.”
A UAB Love Story
“Without UAB, there would be no glass cabin or book,” said Jim. “I moved here from Ohio to take a position in creative writing in the Department of English. And while teaching is a demanding job, it also guarantees summer and winter breaks, which has given me time to build the cabin.
“There are people at UAB who have been my compass in building the cabin and building a life in general. Randy Blythe, retired assistant professor from the English Department, is one person. Our north wall is made of tin from the camp house on his family’s farm in Gadsden. And Ada Long, who founded the University Honors Program and who passed this year—Ada’s home on St. George Island was an inspiration for the design of the glass cabin. Tina and I drove down to St. George to spend time with Ada and Dail Mullins—also a UAB professor—before he passed in 2016 as often as we could. Like Randy, Ada showed me a way to live respectfully with nature.”
Maybe Thoreau is to blame for getting people started on this kind of living when he built his cabin on Walden Pond. Or maybe the dream goes deeper—that desire to make a shelter the way we want and to build it with our hands and sweat is what will truly sustain us.
—James Braziel, MFA
Tina noted that Ada Long not only inspired them, she edited Glass Cabin in its final stages. And many other UAB colleagues led to its creation. “We wouldn’t have published Glass Cabin without Lauren Goodwin Slaughter, a Department of English professor and amazing poet and writer,” she said. “She encouraged Frances McCue, the editor of Pulley Press, to contact us about writing a collection of poems about building our home by hand in rural Alabama. Wendy Reed, associate director for wellbeing initiatives, sent me encouraging texts as we wrote the book last year. Lauren, Wendy, and Kerry Madden-Lunsford, a Department of English professor and a wonderful writer, read and gave me feedback on my writing about the cabin for years.”
Ashley M. Jones, poet laureate of the state of Alabama and associate director of the University Honors Program in the UAB Honors College, published the Braziels’ first collaborative essay in What Things Cost: an Anthology for the People. “She was the first to name us a husband-and-wife writing team,” said Tina.
Do It Yourself
“One of my hopes is that when people read Glass Cabin, it encourages them and helps them find ways to pursue what they want, no matter how distant that want, that dream might seem,” said Jim.
When he was looking for land, Jim drove around rural outposts near Birmingham, stopping at gas stations and barbecue joints and talking with locals. “Then I explained that I wanted the land to build a cabin. Inevitably, the person responded, ‘I want to do that!’” he said. “What I thought was an uncommon dream turned out to be a common one. But then their faces dimmed because something, their job or circumstances, was keeping them from what they truly wanted to do.”
Jim hopes readers—especially his students—will find inspiration in their story. “I want my students to know that a writing life is possible. And it’s worth giving everything, all of one’s labor, to have it.”
I Married Him Before
He Got the Roof On
Married him before June,
before he said we’re moving
come September even if
we live in a tent.
Married him before I saw
our ceiling was so high
rain would blow in.
Married him before he tied
an apron of nails
around my waist each morning.
Before I learned measuring
twice and cutting once
never guarantees getting it
right. Before I fathomed how
this is more epic
than being benighted on a cliffside
or backpacking slot canyons.
How nothing is left safe
at home base. How I must carry
all that I have, all that I am,
around saws and scaffolding,
through rainstorms and sawdust.
Yes, I married him
before I got how all in
all is. Married him
before he called me Trouble
like he calls Dylan
and the cat, a pet he never wanted
but now brushes, pours
a saucer of milk and a cup of water.
Before I knew he’d build
the cat a bed and line it
with his own wool sweaters.
I married him before I got the measure
of a man is the trouble
he loves and how.
—Tina Mozelle Braziel, MFA
