Ep. 18 | Our Favorite Books of 2023 ft Mandi Fugate Sheffel

In Read Appalachia’s season finale, Kendra Winchester is joined by Mandi Fugate Sheffel, the owner of the bookstore Read Spotted Newt, which is located in Hazard, Kentucky.

Things Mentioned

• Read Spotted Newt Website

• Support the Read Spotted Newt on Bookshop.org

• Storygraph

Books Mentioned

All affiliate links for this episode go to support the Read Spotted Newt.

• Appalachia on the Table by Erica Abrams Locklear

• Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy

• Good Women by Halle Hill

• Tar Hollow Trans by Stacy Jane Grover

• The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin 

• This Isn’t Going to End Well by Daniel Wallace

• Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

• Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto

• Gay Poems for Red States by Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.

• Tamp by Denton Loving

• All the Fighting Parts by Hannah V. Sawyerr

• The Second Stop Is Jupiter by upfromsumdirt

(c) Mandi Fugate Sheffel

Guest Info

Mandi Fugate Sheffel was born and raised in Red Fox, Ky. A graduate of Eastern Kentucky University, she found her passion for writing and storytelling at the Appalachian Writers Workshop at the Hindman Settlement School. Her personal essays and opinion pieces can be found in Still: The Journal, Lexington-Herald Leader, and the Courier Journal. Her forthcoming personal essay collection, The Nature of Pain, will be released in 2025 through The University Press of Kentucky. She currently owns and operates, Read Spotted Newt, an independent bookstore in the coalfields of eastern Kentucky.

Website | Instagram

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Music by Olexy from Pixabay