Ep. 3 | What Is the Future of Appalachian Literature?

In the third episode of Read Appalachia, host Kendra Winchester asks, what is the future of Appalachian Literature? To investigate, she talks to authors and editors of Appalachian Futures, an initiative from the University of Kentucky Press that features Black, Native, LGBTQ+ writers, and other writers of marginalized identities. Kendra is joined by special guests Stacy Jane Grover, the author of the forthcoming Tar Hollow Trans: Essays, and her editor Abby Freeland. Plus, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle returns to discuss her role as an editor in the Appalachian Futures series.

Things Mentioned

• University of Kentucky Press

  • Appalachian Futures Series

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Books Mentioned

• Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

• Tar Hollow Trans: Essays by Stacy Jane Grover

• Road Out of Winter: An Apocalyptic Thriller by Allison Stine

• The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860 by Wilma A. Dunaway

• Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander

• Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

• The Evening Hour by Carter Sickels

• Vivid Companion by Irene McKenny

• Crum by Lee Maynard

• The Collected Breece d'j Pancake: Stories, Fragments, Letters by Breece D’J Pancake

• The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson

• As Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake

• Honey from the Lion by Matthew Neill Null

• Crapalachia: A Biography of a Place by Scott McClanahan

• Trampoline by Robert Gipe

• Valley Girl by Crystal Good

• Southernmost by Silas House

• Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film by Meredith McCarroll

• Those We Thought We Knew by David Joy

• The Logan Topographies: Poems by Alena A. Hairston

• The Donkey Elegies: An Essay in Poems by Nikole Brown

• The Patron Saint of Ugly by Marie Manilla

• Another Appalachia by Neema Avashia

Guest Info

(c) Mallory Cash

Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, resides in Qualla, NC. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe (UPK 2020), was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020, and received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award (2021). It also is the first novel published by a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. Clapsaddle’s work appears in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Our State Magazine, and The Atlantic. She is a former secondary English and Cherokee Studies educator. Currently, Clapsaddle is an editor for the Appalachian Futures Series (UPK), serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, and is the President of the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network.

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(c) Stacy Jane Grover

Stacy Jane Grover hails from Ohio’s Appalachian region. She is the author of Tar Hollow Trans: Essays from the University Press of Kentucky, the first book in the Appalachian Futures: Native, Black and Queer Voices series. Her essays have appeared in numerous magazines and print anthologies and have garnered a Notables mention in Best American Essays anthology. She holds an MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Cincinnati.

Website

(c) Abby Freeland

Abby Freeland is a senior acquisitions editor at the University Press of Kentucky. She began her career in book publishing in the UK before returning to her home state of West Virginia, where she was the sales and marketing director and fiction editor at West Virginia University Press for over ten years. She now lives in Winston-Salem, NC, with her family.

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