Veita Jo (pronounced "Vee-ta Jo") Blevins Hampton began writing poetry at age nine. Born in Independence, Kansas and reared in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, several of her first jobs were as editor and author for the Missouri Geological Survey in Rolla, Missouri and as Assistant Director of Adult Education at the Jewish Community Center in St. Louis. Veita Jo became enchanted with cameras while teaching journalism at St. Charles High School, in St. Charles, Missouri, and in1979, obtained her Masters in Photojournalism at the University of Missouri, Columbia. She then worked briefly as a Picture Editor for the Miami News, Miami, Florida, and then returned to Missouri, first to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and then to Columbia, Missouri to teach in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri.

While at the University of Missouri (UMC), she edited two volumes of the nationally acclaimed Best of Photojournalism (6 and 7) for UMC and the National Press Photographers Association. Departing UMC in 1983, Veita Jo taught at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee from 1983 to 1990 where she continued to teach Visual Communication, Photojournalism, Documentary Photography, Basic Photography and Media Writing.

Veita Jo co-authored a picture editing book with mentor Angus W. McDougall, at the University of Missouri, Columbia, Picture Editing and Layout, A Guide to Better Visual Commuication in 1990, an internationally distributed textbook. She continued writing poetry, articles for newspapers and magazine publication, and completed a novel, August in Defiance ~ A Perfect Burial, based on the devastating 1993 flood in the midwest. After a 30 year career teaching, editing, and publishing five books, in 2004, Veita Jo launched Bluestocking Editorial Services and published her first small volume of poetry with photographs. In 2006, she wrote poems to Scott Charles Clarkson's travel photographs from contemporary Vietnam, Windows to Vietnam, A Journey in Pictures & Verse, Cheshire Publishing Company, 2007. www.windowstovietnam.com

Veita Jo contributes to the larger community of service organizations through the Bedford County (Tennessee) Arts Council, Liberty Lion's Club, the Not Yet Dead Poet's Society of Tullahoma, Tennessee, Academy of American Poets, Americans for the Arts, Tennessee Writers Alliance, among other author and artist's organizations, both at home and across the country. Veita Jo Hampton lives with her family in her lodge-like home on a rocky, wooded hillside in Bluestocking Hollow, Shelbyville, Tennessee.

Author photo by Judith Marie Blevins