Edwina Pendarvis

Edwina Pendarvis

Edwina Pendarvis, Professor Emeritus, Marshall University College of Education, has authored books, chapters, and articles on creativity, literature, arts, and culture. She has served as an interim editor for  Journal of Appalachian Studies and currently serves as book editor for Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. She has written about the intersection of creativity and Appalachian culture in articles and essays, including an essay entitled, Rustic Scenes in Black and White, about the 19^th century African-American poet, Effie Waller Smith.  She has written young adult biographies of William Faulkner, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Howard Pinter, and co-authored one on Pearl Buck (books published in a dual language edition by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press). Her latest book, a study of, what ballet meant to Appalachian women who took dance classes in the mid-twentieth century, Another World: Ballet Lessons from Appalachia (2022). Her most recent article appears in Goldenseal Magazine (Winter, 2024), “Johnny Fullen, Mayor of Matewan: A Love Story,“ features the African-American mayor, elected to serve for 14 years before stepping down in 1999, in the town made famous by John Sayles’ movie, Matewan, about the West Virginia mine wars of 1911 to 1921.