As one goes through the pages of Koonce’s book and learns more about the strides made by different groups in gaining political representation across West Virginia, it is easier to understand his fascination with local politics. While one may not necessarily agree that voting is the right that affirms all others, it is undoubtedly a tool of empowerment, one that is inextricably tied to Jefferson County’s local character, history — and future. Read the Full Story >>
book review
Blue-Collar Tragedy
Undone Valley, William R. Soldan’s first novel, opens with two epigraphs from none other than French existentialists Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. They give the reader a feel for the bleakness that is about to come but also of the introspective nature of Soldan’s well-delineated characters in what is nevertheless a gripping literary thriller. Read the Full Story >>
Green Bank: The Town That Stood Still
For decades, Green Bank and its surroundings have attracted people seeking a quieter life, including Stephen Kurczy, a rara avis reporter who hadn’t “owned a cellphone in nearly a decade” when he decided to make it the theme of his book, The Quiet Zone: Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence. Read the Full Story >>
Voices From the Past
In 1972, Anne Lawrence, a 21-year-old junior at Swarthmore College studying history and sociology, traveled through the coalfields of central and southern West Virginia, as well as Kentucky and Virginia. Her goal was to interview retired miners and their families about their union experiences, including their participation in the Battle of Blair Mountain that took place in Logan County, WV from August 25 to September 2 of 1921. Read the Full Story >>
An Introduction to Gurney Norman
Even though he is not a prolific author – he has published just four works of fiction in the last five decades – Kentucky’s Gurney Norman’s body of work has earned him a major place in Appalachian literature. The reissue of Allegiance, a collection of short stories and vignettes in a primarily autobiographical key, is as good an introduction as any Norman title to a world of close connection to the land, acute observation of both human interactions and nature, and an engaging, poetic voice that captures the pure joy of storytelling. Read the Full Story >>
The Toil And The Grind
William Trent Pancoast (born 1949) is one of those rare authors who still writes about the workplace and, more specifically, blue collar jobs like assembling auto parts at a General Motors plant or seeding a golf course Read the Full Story >>
Book Review: Hungry Dogs
Compared to national politics, it often seems that local governmental affairs involve lower stakes and mundane concerns. That outlook is just as frequently mistaken. History has shown us repeatedly that grassroots movements or social malaises can brew under the radar of the national media only to erupt on the national stage with explosive force. Read the Full Story >>
Angry Politics
Populism is typically analyzed by political scientists, who look at the ideological frameworks and political dynamics at play; historians, who delve into the roots of the different movements; and journalists, who take a more contingent approach to the parties and personalities. Beyond Populism enriches these perspectives with a primarily anthropological view of the political projects typically labeled as populist. Read the Full Story >>
Down and Out in Appalachia
When it comes to judging a book, titles can be just as deceitful as covers. With a title like F*ckface, one might expect Leah Hampton’s short story collection to be a brash set of tales rooted in hardscrabble Appalachia. Read the Full Story >>
Ron Rash’s Appalachia
Ron Rash (1953) started out as a poet and short story writer in the ‘90s before he published his first novel, One Foot in Eden (2002) and the novel that catapulted him to national literary prominence, Serena (2008), later adapted into film. In his newest work, In the Valley, Rash returns to the short story form as well as to the characters of Serena in the novella that gives name to this collection. Read the Full Story >>
Poisoned Land
The cover of John Woods’ debut novel Lady Chevy portrays a mountain landscape against an orange-hued backdrop. The colors may depict an oddly-tinted sunset or, more likely, the fiery, sulfurous sky of a land ravaged by the fracking industry, where flares emerging from giant towers light the horizon and tainted aquifers, flammable tap water, and earthquakes have become a normal occurrence. Read the Full Story >>
Bearing Witness to the Trump Presidency
I do not hate Trump. I am appalled by him. There is a difference. I see Trump as a massive and dangerous symptom of a political disease that has been festering and growing in this country for most of my adult life. Ideological extreme partisanship, now fueled by social media, is as bad for our political well-being as the forest fires in Australia were bad for the entire ecology. Read the Full Story >>
Sobriety Nuts and Bolts
Reading a book on addiction recovery is not as daunting as recovery itself, but it can be a difficult task for numerous reasons... Read the Full Story >>
Appalachian Noir – ‘Coal Black,’ by Chris McGinley (Shotgun Honey, 2019)
In one of the most searing dialogues of Chris McGinley’s debut short story collection Coal Black, an eastern Kentucky drug dealer known as Hellbender asks a sheriff who’s been pursuing him: “Why do you think people around here are so addicted to drugs?” He answers his own question: “It’s because of depression. There is a streak of fatalism in Coal Black that is not just informed by the trappings of the crime fiction genre, but by the socioeconomic devastation of its rural Kentucky setting. The survivalist outlook of the characters in these stories is its inevitable consequence. Read the Full Story >>
It Happened in Dogleg Bend, West Virginia
Short story collections can rise and fall by something as simple as the order in which its stories are presented to the reader. A punchy opening tale or an evocative closing yarn can compel the audience to read further or leave an impression that makes up for the weaker stories within its pages. The stakes are even higher when the stories are interconnected like in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, a standard bearer of this subgenre, where a fictional Midwest town is the canvas upon which the characters’ lives unfold, or Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, where its main character and his drug-addled perception of the world serve as the collection’s connecting tissue. Read the Full Story >>
