Reviewed by Philip K. Jason An independent woman; a lush frontier environment; the approach of war; and a romance of opposites are only some of the ingredients in Ms. Crawford’s ambitious first novel. Combining a style that is frequently lyrical, abundant historical research that has been well-absorbed and woven into the fiction with authority, and […]
September Read of the Month: “Keowee Valley,” by Katherine Scott Crawford
September 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The Anthology of Appalachian Writers Now Accepting Submissions
September 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The editors of The Anthology of Appalachian Writers have announced that they are now accepting submissions for their forthcoming Gretchen Moran Laskas Volume. Submission guidelines are available here. Submit electronic copies of any original, unpublished work of fiction or poetry, for consideration by the editors, to Dr. S. Bailey Shurbutt: sshurbut@shepherd.edu.
July Read of the Month: “Blueberry Years,” by Jim Minnick
July 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Jim Minnick’s The Blueberry Years, re-released in paperback a few weeks ago, proclaims itself, in the subtitle, as being a “memoir of farm and family.” And so it is. Yet, while Minnick is too humble to proclaim it as such, it is the reader’s prerogative to make of a book what it really and truly […]
“Sinners of Sanction County,” by Charles Dodd White
June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Danilo Thomas Charles Dodd White’s Sinners of Sanction County, set in the heart of Appalachia, is packed full of booze, animals, backwoodsmen and woodswomen, as well of as the blood that can be drawn from each of them in the most violent, if not creative, of means. These tropes have come to be […]
“Ghosting” by Kirby Gann
April 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Tina Egnoski In Kirby Gann’s new book, Ghosting, Kentucky is raw-edged, poverty-stricken and violent. It is also a place of physical beauty and, for some, of personal redemption. The protagonist James Cole Prather, known as Cole, is twenty-three and at loose ends. He lives with his mother Lyda, an addict. His half-brother Fleece […]