Ep. 56 | Conversations: Wes Blake & Em J Parsley
In this episode of our Conversations series, Wes Blake and Em J Parsley discuss novellas.
Things Mentioned
Books Mentioned
Pineville Trace by Wes Blake
You, From Below by Em Parsley
Kinfolks by Gurney Norman
Nothing Gold Can Stay by Ron Rash
Stories by Breece D’j Pancake
Deviant Hollers edited by Zane McNeill and Rebecca Scott
Queer Communion edited by Davis Shoulders
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
All About Love by bell hooks
The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones
Flux by Jinwoo Chong
The Caretaker by Ron Rash
Returning to Earth by Jim Harrison
Trigger Warning by Jacinda Townsend
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
Light Years by James Salter
Guest Info
© Wes Blake
Wes Blake is the award-winning author of Pineville Trace, a Southern Gothic flash novella (Etchings Press, 2024). His narrative nonfiction collection Hazelgreen and Other Haunts, a memoir of place-in-essays, is forthcoming in 2027 from West Virginia University Press. Wes’ debut book won the Etchings Press Novella Prize and was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His fiction and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, storySouth, Louisiana Literature Journal, and Untelling, among others. He is part of the visiting faculty at Eastern Kentucky University’s Bluegrass Writers Studio MFA in Creative Writing Program and lives in Nonesuch, Kentucky with his wife and cats, where they’ve planted 100 trees. Learn more at wesblake.com.
© Em J Parsley
Em J Parsley (they/he) is a farmer, environmentalist, and cultivator of oyster mushrooms living in Lexington, Kentucky. They are the author of the novella, You, From Below (Split Lip Press, 2025) and the poetry chapbook, The Anonym Gospels (April Gloaming Publishing, 2024), which won the Apogee Poetry Chapbook Award.
