Perfect Black by Crystal Wilkinson has won the Working Class Studies Tillie Olsen Award for 2022.
Lambda Literary has announced that Silas House is one of two winners of the 2022 Jim Duggins, PhD, Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Dedicated to the memory of author and journalist Jim Duggins, this prize honors LGBTQ-identified authors who have published multiple novels.
A Little Bit Country by Brian D. Kennedy, a young adult novel with a fictional setting inspired by Dollywood, made BuzzFeed’s list of All the Best Books Coming Out in June 2022.
]]>The Book Woman’s Daughter by Kim Michelle Richardson was #13 on the New York Times Best-Seller list for May 22 in the Combined Print and E-Book Fiction category.
The Book Woman’s Daughter also made the (Out Now) section of Deep South Magazine 2022 Summer Reading List as did The Grand Design: A Novel of Dorothy Draper by Joy Callaway, set mainly at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. Their forthcoming anticipated books include Shifty’s Boys by Chris Offutt (June) set in Eastern Kentucky and The Last to Vanish by Megan Miranda (July), set in Western North Carolina.
The Bitter Southerner's 2022 Summer Reading Roundup of already published books includes Perfect Black by Crystal Wilkinson, Living Queer History: Remembrance and Belonging in a Southern City by Gregory Samantha Rosenthal, and Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia.
Ron Houchin died on May 14th at the age of 75. He lived in South Port, Ohio, across the Ohio River from Huntington, West Virginia, where he grew up. He earned both a B.A. and an M.A. Ed. from Marshall University in Huntington and taught English for 30 years at Fairland High School in Ohio. He published ten volumes of poetry, a short story collection, and a youth novel. His last book of poems, Talking to Shadows, was published by Louisiana State University Press, widely considered the most prestigious poetry publisher in the South. He not only was a speaker and workshop leader in Ireland, but a volume of selected poems was published there. He was also a workshop leader in Prague, Key West, and Hindman, Kentucky.
]]>Lock Her Up by Tina Parker was one of eleven finalists for Eric Hoffer’s 2022 Medal Provocateur that recognizes the “best on the frontier of poetry – the experimental, the innovative, the daring and stunning, the impromptu in technique and voice.”
The Girl Singer by Marianne Worthington was a finalist for the 2022 Montaigne Medal given to “thought-provoking books. These are books that either illuminate, progress, or redirect thought.”
Where I Can’t Follow by Ashley Blooms has been named one of 12 Spring Reading Picks by Deep South Magazine.
The Southern Review of Books has named Lioness by Mark Powell and Y’all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia edited by Z. Zane McNeil among the eleven best Southern books of April 2022
The Book Woman’s Daughter by Kim Michele Richardson has been named by Library Reads as one of the top ten books to be published in May 2022.
The Read Spotted Newt, Hazard, Kentucky’s new bookstore, owned by Mandi Fugate Sheffel, tied for fourth place in the Invest 606 contest for Eastern Kentucky entrepreneurs. She was one of thirteen finalists
]]>My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is also one of five finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Two authors with strong ties to Appalachian were selected for the 2022 Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame. They are George Ella Lyon and Loyal Jones.
Where I Can’t Follow by Ashley Blooms is one of twelve new releases for Spring 2022 recommended by Deep South magazine.
Junaluska: Oral Histories of a Black Appalachian Community by Susan E. Keefe and the Junaluska Heritage Association has been chosen for ASC Common Reading Program next academic year. https://today.appstate.edu/2022/03/23/junaluska
Rita Quillen’s Wayland is a March Bonus Book pick by the International Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Book Club.
]]>
PERFECT BLACK also made Elle magazine's list of 38 Black History Books to read this year.
George Ella Lyon was the guest of honor at the bimonthly series from the Library of Congress’s podcast, “The Poet and the Poem,” in the middle of February.
A TWILIGHT REEL by Michael Amos Cody is the winner in the short Story category of the Feathered Quill Book Award.
WHERE I CAN’T FOLLOW by Ashley Blooms has been named a most anticipated book by Good Housekeeping, Gizmodo, Den of Geek, and Tor.com. It has also been long-listed for the Crook's Book Prize.
There are so many outstanding books that are set almost entirely in the Southern Appalachian Region or feature characters primarily molded by our region, that I cannot cover books partially set here. But my readers may well want to know that one of the most honored books of 2021 featured the Great Smoky Mountains as a locale that was key, though not predominant. Bewilderment by Richard Powers was a New York Times best-seller, an Oprah Book Club selection, and a book assessed as “notable” and “best book” often and both shortlisted and longlisted for prestigious awards.
Sticker by Henry Hoke was named one of the most anticipated books of 2022 by Electric Lit and The Millions.
Perfect Black by Crystal Wilkinson is one of five books nominated for the 53rd Annual NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry, and is one of eight that Orion Magazine listed in “New Year: New Poetry: Eight Fresh Poetry Recommendations for 2022.
My Monticello Jocelyn Nicole Johnson is one of six finalists for the John Leonard Prize given to a first book by the National Book Critics Circle. It was also named one of the Top 10 Southern Books of 2021 by the Atlanta Journal Constitution and number 3 in Time magazine’s Ten Best Fiction Books of 2021.
Garden & Gun’s Favorite Books of 2021 include My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, The Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People by Rick Bragg, and Bewilderness by Karen Tucker.
Nina: A Story of Nina Simone by Traci N. Todd has been named a Notable Children’s Book – 2022 - by the Association for Library Service to Children and it was a 2022 Illustrator Honor Book by the Coretta Scot King Awards for its illustrations by Christian Robinson.
Both Nina: A Story of Nina Simone by Traci N. Todd and In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner are included in the special edition of Publishers Weekly for those Children’s Books they gave starred reviews to in 2021.
Following an annual custom, The Millions chose twelve prominent authors to write a few words about their year in reading. Of the twelve, they chose two Appalachians, Anjali Enjeti, a woman from an immigrant family who grew up in Detroit and then Chattanooga and now teaches at Reinhardt University in North Georgia and Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, an African American public-school art teacher in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Mesha Maren, who grew up in Alderson, West Virginia, is one of eight authors highlighted by Leigh Haber, Hamilton Cain, Wadzanai Mhute, and Joshunda Sanders in an article entitled “Lit Up” in Oprah Daily. The subtitle characterizes the authors they profile as “forces for good.”
]]>My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson made the Time magazine list of the ten best fiction books of 2021.
Publishers Weekly has announced their best books of 2021. They include:
Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Modern Virginia by Elizabeth Catte
Nina: A Story of Nina Simone by Traci N. Todd
In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner has been named on the best children’s books of the year by the New York Times.
Where I Can’t Follow by Ashley Blooms, due out February 15th, is set in fictional Blackdamp County, Kentucky. It made the Good Housekeeping list of “The 15 Best and Most-Anticipated Books of 2022.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry, due May 3rd, is set in fictional Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, just outside real Asheville. It is on the 30 books that Parade magazine can’t wait to read in 2022. It also made Bibliofile’s 25 most anticipated and best books of 2022 and Bustle’s 65. and It is one of 17 most anticipated fiction books from Ask.
]]>Maurice Manning has been selected as one of four judges for the 2022 PEN/JEAN Book Award. He teaches at Transylvania College.
My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson will be adapted by Chernin Entertainment for a Netflix film!
The Western North Carolina Historical Association has named five finalist for the 2021 Thomas Wolfe Memorial Award. They are:
Mary Othella Burnette for Lige of the Black Walnut Tree: Growing Up Black in Southern Appalachia
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle for Even As We Breathe
Matthew Wimberley for All the Great Territories
Vicki Lane for And the Crows Took Their Eyes
The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins has been named one of six finalists for the Southern Book Prize. Last year’s winner was Carter Sickles for The Prettiest Star.
Needlework by Julia Watts is one of three October books on Lambda Literary’s “Back to School World: Eight Queer Young Adult Books Coming This Fall.”
My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson made the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2021 list.
The Greenville, South Carolina, County Schools Hall of Fame inducted six people into their 2021 Hall of Fame, including Glenis Redmond who they appropriately cited as an “acclaimed poet.” She graduated from Woodmont High School in 1981.
The November 5th issue of The Week spotlighted two Appalachian books. Best books . . chosen by Yrsa Daley-Ward included Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974) by Annie Dillard. Daley-Ward enthused, “This strange, shifting literary vortex is haunting, brilliant, warm, weird, and so, so delicious. It made a home in my soul.” Also, of interest . . .in scandals revisited appeared The Taking of Jemima Boone by Matthew Pearl. Quoting reviewers as saying that Pearl “resists oversimplifying a history that has been too often presented as a frontier romance,” and that the author paints, “a fascinating picture of frontier Kentucky.” The November 12 issue of The Week features Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, an art teacher in the Charlottesville, Virginia, schools, as their “Author of the Week.”
]]>The October 22nd issue of This Week included a spotlight on The Speckled Beauty by Rick Bragg. Concluding that “the appeal of Bragg’s story knows no boundries . . . . and quotes Laurie Hertzel of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune writing that Bragg is “almost always entertaining.”
Crystal Wilkinson’s story, “Endangered Species” was chosen to appear in The Best Short Stories of 2021.
There is a Hulu TV Series based on Beth Macy’s book, Dopesick.
]]>My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson – scheduled for publication on October 5th - is one of three finalists for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in fiction. It is also on Time magazine’s list of its 34 most anticipated books of Fall, 2021and the even dozen that Esquire deems Best Books of Fall 2021and on Shonbdaland’s Your Fall 2021 Reading List and The St. Louis Post Dispatch’s 50 all Books You Should Consider Reading. The August 9 Publishers Weekly gave My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson a special boxed one-third of a page review concluding, “This incandescent work speaks not just to the moment, but to history.”
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi was one of the six novels on the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist.
Country Living’s 26 Best New Books. for This Fall includes The Ballad of Laurel Springs, due out on October 19th, These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant, due out October 26th, In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner, and The Speckled Beauty by Rick Bragg.
Deep South magazine’s Fall/Winter Reading List 2021-22 includes The Ballad of Laurel Springs by Janet Beard due out October 19th, Old Fires by Josh Patrick Sheridan and These Silent Woods by Kimi Cunningham Grant, both due out October 26th, and A Fire in the Night by Christopher Swann
Springer Mountain: Meditations on Killing and Eating by Wyatt Williams and A Fire in the Night by Christopher Swann made The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s 10 Must Read Southern Books This Fall
Road Out of Winter by Alison Stine, due out October 26, made Good Housekeeping’s 25 Fall Books You Have to Read This Season.
The Taking of Jemima Boone by Matthew Pearl made The St. Louis Post Dispatch’s 50 all Books You Should Consider Reading
Kirkus’s 150 Most Anticipated Fall Books includes Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend by Jackie Kay, due out on September 28th.
The 2021 Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice is awarded to Kiki Petrosino for her newest poetry collection White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia, published by Sarabande Books in 2020. Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky, has also chosen Petrosino’s book as their residency book in common.
Barbara Atkeson Smith (1929-2021) died. For 37 years she was an English professor at Alderson-Broaddus College in Phillippi, W.V. and for 20 years chair of their Division of Humanities. She was the author of both fiction and non-fiction books and active in regional writing conferences and workshops.
]]>Finalists for the Library of Virginia Literary Award in poetry include two poets who work for the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Annie Kim is the Assistant Dean for Public Service at the University of Virginia School of Law. Her poetry book is Eros Unbroken. Kiki Petrosino directs the Creative Writing Program at U.Va. Her book is White Blood a Lyric of Virginia.
My Monticello, a short story collection by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson, due for release on October 5, is on Esquire’s list of the Best Books of Fall 2021 and Time’s Most Anticipated list. A public-school art teacher, Johnson lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Vulture’s Fall Preview of 40 Books We Can’t Wait to Read This Fall includes Bessie Smith: A Poet’s Biography of a Blues Legend by Jackie Kay, scheduled for release on September 21.
]]>David Joy’s When These Mountains Burn has won the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers honoring the book of the year that best represents literary excellence in the genre.
Betty by Tiffany McDaniel made the American Bookseller’s Association’s Indie Next list for August as one of the 6 Now in Paperback Titles.
Crystal Wilkinson is the 2021 recipient of the Thomas D. Clark Medallion for Perfect Black (out 8/3). This award is given annually by the Thomas D. Clark Foundation to writers whose literary achievements highlight Kentucky history and culture.
Carter Sickles has won the 2021 Fiction Award from the Ohioana Library, an award that has been given since 1942. Tiffany McDaniel won the Readers’ Choice Award for her novel, Betty.
The June 28th edition of Publisher’s Weekly has a two-page spread by Louisa Ermelino, “Don’t Know Much About History: Matthew Pearl explores the story of the American frontier through the kidnapping of Daniel Boone’s daughter.” It promotes The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations, and the Kidnap That Shaped a Nation by Matthew Pearl due to be released in October.
]]>English Lit by Bernard Clay was one of the additional poetry books recognized.
The Taking of Jemima Boone: Colonial Settlers, Tribal Nations and the Kidnap that Shaped a Nation by Matthew Pearl achieved a top 10 rating in history.
In Literary Fiction, My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson was one of the books selected.
In Politics and Current Events, Quiet Zone; Unraveling the Mystery of a Town Suspended in Silence by Stephen Kurczy was also recognized.
The American Bookseller’s Association’s Indie Next list for July includes six newly reprinted items. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi is one of the six.
The Independent Publisher Book Awards – nation-wide for 2020 - have been announced:
Charles Dodd White won the Gold Award in Best Regional Fiction: South for How Fire Runs from Swallow Press.
Megan Denton Ray won a tie for the Gold Award in Poetry-Standard for Mustard, Milk and Gin from Hub City Press
George Singleton won a tie for the Silver Award in Short Story Fiction for You Want More from Hub City Press
Kiki Petrosino won a tie for silver in Poetry-Standard for White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia from Sarabande Books
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle won the Bronze Award in literary fiction for Even As We Breathe from the University Press of Kentucky.
Jim Casada won the Bronze Award in Best Region Non-Fiction: Southeast for A Smoky Mountain Boyhood: Memories, Musings, and More from the University of Tennessee Press.
The French edition of Renea Winchester’s novel, Outbound Train, De L’autre Cote des Rails, has been recommended for summer reading by the southwest France bookstore, Plein Soleil.
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The American Booksellers Association’s Indie Next list for June includes
Bewildeness a novel by Karen Tucker in a fictional setting inspired by living in Asheville, North Carolina.
The “Read This Next” for Spring 2021 list from the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance includes:
The Killing Hills, a novel by Chris Offutt set in Eastern Kentucky.
Crystal Wilkinson has successfully sold her culinary memoir with recipes at auction to an imprint of Penguin/Random House. Look for it in 2023.
One of the key pieces in the supporting super-structure of Appalachian Literature for the last more than forty years has been the Highland Summer Conference (HSC) held every summer at Radford University. People come to this workshop both to learn about our literature, how to teach it, and how to write it. Several of its students learned so well that they later became teachers at the HSC. Parks Lanier created the HSC and turned it over to Grace Toney Edwards who ran it for 27 years. When she retired, the baton was passed on to Theresa Burris. Now, we have a book, Writers by the River: Reflections on 40+ Years of the Highland Summer Conference edited by Donia S. Eley and Grace Toney Edwards. This book of essays from those who participated in the HSC and revere it gives voice to many of the leading contemporary practitioners and promoters of our literature.
Marilou Awiakta is being celebrated by the University of Tennessee libraries in a video to be presented at 6:30 p.m. on June 3. To register, e-mail arusse52@utk.edu
West Virginia University Press is the publisher of a book that garnered the PEN/Faulkner prize, one of the most prestigious in the book world. The award is given annually to the best work of fiction by a living US writer, and this is the first time any university press has published a winning recipient. The book is The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw. The book consists of nine stories that follow four generations of characters. Philyaw was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, did her undergraduate work at Yale and her Masters at Manhattanville College. She worked for a Pittsburgh bank in communications before she was able to devote full-time to her writing and speaking. She lives in Pittsburgh with her two daughters.
Steve Flairty has done one of his excellent “Kentucky by Heart” columns for the Northern Kentucky Tribune on Rebecca Caudill (1899-1985) the Harlan County born author of more than twenty books, most written for children and young adults. https://www.nkytribune.com/2021/04/kentucky-by-heart-harlan-county-native-rebecca-caudill-was-a-prolific-childrens-young-adult-author/
]]>Southbound by Anjali Enjeti made "The Million’s Most Anticipated Books for April 2021" list and "Electric Lit’s list of 43 Books by Women of Color to Read in 2021."
The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins is number 4 on the Good Housekeeping "Best Books to Read in 2021 So Far" list.
The 2021 Lambda Literary Awards Finalists have been announced, and include:
Bisexual Nonfiction – The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia by Emma Copley
]]>The Southern Independent Bookseller’s Alliance has re-named their Okra Next list to Read This Next!. For Winter 2021 it includes:
The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins, set in Birmingham
The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins is also on the Deep South Magazine 11 Book Picks for Spring 2021
On the "Read This Next" Spring List from SIBA is
The Killing Hills by Chris Offutt, set in Eastern Kentucky, scheduled for a June release
On the Uncorked Librarian’s List of April 2021 book releases is
Hope Between the Pages by Pepper Basham, set in Asheville.
The New York Times rated New and Noteworthy:
Shaking the Gates of Hell: A Search for Family and Truth in the Wake of the Civil Rights Revolution by John Archibald, set in Birmingham
The Department of English at Appalachian State University hosted a live-streamed writers series this semester that can still be viewed free by the public. It is co-sponsored by Appalachian Journal.
Check out the Reading and Craft Talk by
Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxwjLwCindE
And by Carter Sickels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxO8usYH9cQ
And by Charles Dodd White: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6_z6ocyz_k
The Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College has announced this year’s Weatherford Awards.
The fiction award goes to Carter Sickels for The Prettiest Star. Runner’s Up are The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw, F*ckface by Leah Hampton, and How Fire Runs by Charles Dodd White.
The poetry award to Matthew Wimberley for All The Great Territories. Runner’s Up are Talking to Shadows by Ron Houchin, Of This River by Noah Davis, and Redneck Bouquet by Jeff Mann.
The non-fiction award to Eric Luke Lassiter, Brian A. Hoey, and Elizabeth Campbell for I’m Afraid of that Water. Runner’s Up are RX Appalachia by Lesly-Marie Buer, Peace in the Mountains by Thomas Weyant, and Shelter from the Machine by Jason Strange.
]]>Barbara Kingsolver has been awarded the 2021 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature - formerly the Sidney Lanier Prize, but this year re-named in honor of the late son of a donor. Last year's winner was Ron Rash, and the previous year it went to Fred Chappell. Lee Smith won this honor in its second year, 2013.
The City of Asheville’s Greenway Committee is considering naming the section of their greenway that adjoins the French Broad River for Wilma Dykeman (1925-2006) whose 1955 book, The French Broad, both celebrated the river and called attention to the need to deal with its pollution problems. The first official greenway master plan, released in 2009, suggested naming the city’s greenways after natural features, but Lucy Crown, the city’s greenway planner is reconsidering given the strong impact that Dykeman had on transforming the river.
The 2021 Wilma Dykeman Stokely Memorial Lecture will happen on Tuesday March 9th at 6:30 P. M. virtually and feature Frank X Walker and Wiley Cash in conversation. Free and open to the public. Access via tiny.utk.edu/StokelyLecture_2021
Latria Graham was chosen as one of the first to receive the Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s Steve Kemp Writer’s Residency. A year after her residence, she published “Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream” in Outside magazine. She recently learned that it has been named a finalist for the 2021 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award and will be a featured story in “Best American Travel Writing 2021” and “Best American Science and Nature Writing 2021.” Find the full article - no wonder it has been so well received - at: https://www.outsideonline.com/2416929/out-there-nobody-can-hear-you-scream
Dolly Parton has been named Southern Living’s Southerner of the Year. They singled out her Imagination Library as the primary reason for their pick. Now in its 25th year, it has distributed 132 Million books in 5 countries. She is the co-author most recently of Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics with Robert K. Oermann and the author of Dolly an autobiography and of Dream More: Celebrate the Dreamer in You. Many books have been written about her and her impact.
Dolly Parton was also named to USA TODAY’s Women of the Century List. Celebrating 100 years of women’s suffrage – at least for most white women. They picked ten women from each state, including several from Appalachia. Also on Tennessee’s list is Marilou Awiakta. She is the author most notably of Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother’s Wisdom, and Abiding Appalachia: Where Mountain and Atom Meet. She was born in Knoxville and grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In her case, she really did have a Cherokee grandfather. Now 84 she lives in Memphis where her late husband served as a physician throughout his career. From Kentucky, Loretta Lynn of Johnson County made the list. She has written a cookbook and two memoirs, Coal Miner’s Daughter and Still Woman Enough. West Virginia includes the author Pearl Buck of Hillsboro who wrote biographies of both her West Virginia parents as well as better known books about China and Mary Lou Retton of Fairmont who is known best as a gymnast, but also has books in print, including a memoir and a book about achieving happiness. On the Virginia list is Nikki Giovanni, the poet who teaches at Virginia Tech and June Carter Cash of Hiltons, the author of the memoir, Among My Klediments. Condoleezza Rice, a native of Birmingham, represents Alabama. She has written several books, including memoirs.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi finished up the year being named #2 in This Week’s list of the five best novels of the year 2020.
Five Finalists in each category for the Southern Book Prize, presented by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance include
In Fiction – The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickles
In Childrens – Be Not Far From Me by Mindy McGinnis
Garden and Gun’s list of “Our Favorite Books for Southerners in 2020” includes at #10 In the Valley by Ron Rash, at #18 When These Mountains Burn by David Joy, and at # 24 How To Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) by Barbara Kingsolver.
Garden and Gun also ran an article entitled, “The Top of 2021 Reading List for Southerners” that listed 30 books that G & G contributors and editors planned to read or re-read this year. Some are forthcoming. Some are newly published, and others are from way back. Included are You Want More by George Singleton and Deliverance by James Dickey.
On the January 24th New York Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller list, The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins, set in Birmingham, was #4.
The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins made the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 lists of CNN, Newsweek, Vulture, PopSugar, Parade, BuzzFeed, E!Oline, Time Out, Women’s Day, Goodreads, She Reads, Good Housekeeping, CrimeReads, Frolic, Hello!, and Suspense.
Book Riot’s Most Anticipated Books of 2021 includes Pure America: Eugenics and the Making of Virginia by Elizabeth Catte forthcoming in February.
]]>Dolly Parton, Songteller by Dolly Parton and Robert K. Oermann debuted at #3 on December 6th the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction bestseller list and stayed on the list all month. It retained its #3 spot on the December 13 list, fell to 6th place on the December 20th list, and to #15 on the December 27 list.
Number 2 in Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Books of 2020 is Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi. It is also one of Teen Vogue’s 10 Best Books of 2020 You Should Be Reading Right Now.
NPR has released their Favorite Books of 2020. Included are Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, You Want More by George Singleton, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, and Shiner by Amy Jo Burns.
Book Riot’s list of 50 Best Books of 2020 includes Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi.
Death in Mud Lick: A Coal Country Fight against the Drug Companies that Delivered the Opioid Epidemic by Eric Eyre and She Come By It Natural : Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarch made Literary Hub’s list of the 65 Favorite Books of the Year, 2020.
Deep South Magazine’s Fall/Winter Reading List 2020-21 includes The Madwoman of Preacher’s Cove by Joy Ross Davis, Mountain Laurel by Lori Benton, Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, and You Want More: Selected Stories by George Singleton,
Kentucky Humanities has selected The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson as their 2021 Kentucky Reads selection. For $50, Kentucky Humanities will supply a civic group or library or book club or church with 15 copies of The Birds of Opulence and publicity materials and pay one of their six discussion leaders to come to your group to discuss the novel.
]]>Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle made the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s even shorter list of “Four New Southern Books for Fall Reading.”
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi was named one of four Best Books of Fall 2020 by O Magazine.
The Kentucky Arts Council has announced its 2020 Governor’s Awards in the Arts. Their National Award went to Tom T. Hall, a Carter County native and their Artists Award went to Silas House, a Laurel County native.
The November 13th issue of This Week includes a review of She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh.
]]>Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi was # 3 on the New York Times hardcover fiction list for the week of September 20,# 6 for the week of October 27th and #13 the week of October 4th. The author grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, one of the settings of the novel. It was one of eleven new books recommended by The New York Times on September 17 for the week.
The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance list of their fall 2020 Okra Picks includes Make Me Rain by Nikki Giovanni and She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh and How Fire Runs by Charles Dodd White.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi was named on of Time magazine’s 42 Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2020 and Get Literary’s 32 Most Anticipated New Reads of Fall 2020 and Literary Hubb’s Ultimate Fall 2020 Books Previ
She Come By It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh is also a current Amazon Editor’s pick and one of Book Page’s most anticipated books of Fall 2020 and one of Get Literary’s 32 Most Anticipated New Reads of Fall, 2020 and Lit Hub’s Ultimate Fall 2020 Books Preview
The American Book Awards this year gave their Criticism Award to Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy by Meredith McCarroll and Anthony Harkins
]]>Betty by Tiffany McDaniel was named one of O Magazine’s 22 “Best Books to Pick Up Before Summer Ends” and to Entertainment Weekly’s “20 Late-Summer Must-Reads Coming in August,” and Sheerluxe’s “6 New Books to Read This August,” and Salon’s “Provocative Must-Reads for August.
Both Betty by Tiffany McDaniel and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi are on E on line’s list of “17 Books to Check Out Before the End of Summer.”
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi is one of Entertainment Weekly’s 20 New Books to Read in September, and on Library Reads list of the ten books published in September that library staff across the country love, and on Amazon’s list of the Best Books of the Month of September in Literature and Fiction, and on BuzzFeed News list of “38 Books to Read this Fall.”
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, You Want More by George Singleton, and Where I Come From by Rick Bragg made the Atlanta Journal-Constitution list of New Southern Books We’re Eager To Read in Fall 2020.
The New York Times, back in June, named White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia by Kiki Petrosino, one of a half dozen poetry books they considered, “New and Noteworthy.”
The Manly Wade Wellman Award was founded in 2013 to recognize outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors. The 2020 award covers novels published in 2019. The award is named for long-time North Carolina author Manly Wade Wellman with the permission of his estate. One of five finalists is To the Bones by Valerie Nieman published by West Virginia University Press.
The 2020 Lillian Smith Awards has announced the following on-line events – Wednesday, October 7th at 6:00 – an evening with George Singleton. Thursday, October 8 at 2:30 - Lit Café – Back of Beyond: A Horace Kephart Biography
The Berry Center – directed by Wendell Berry’s daughter to promote his work and legacy – has named The Birds of Opulence by Crystal Wilkinson their 2020 Agrarian Literary League selection.
]]>George Singleton scored a starred review in the July 17th issue of Publishers Weekly for his book, You Want More: Selected Stories of George Singleton due to be published in September. The review concludes, “Fans and newcomers alike will rejoice in reading these highlights from a Southern literary master.”
The American Bookseller’s Association’s Indie Next list for August, 2020, includes in its “Now in Paperback” list, Stay and Fight by Madeline ffitch.
The American Bookseller’s Association Indie Next list for September 2020 includes Betty: A Novel by Tiffany McDaniel set in Appalachian Ohio and Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, a novelist who grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. It’s “Now in Paperback” list includes Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson of Sewanee, Tennessee. Nominated as one of three finalists for the Library of Virginia Award in Poetry this year is David Huddle’s My Surly Heart. They also have a “People’s Choice” category. The People’s Choice in non-fiction includes Thomas Jefferson’s Education by Alan Taylor who teaches at the University of Virginia. In the fiction category is True Places: A Novel by Sonja Yoerg that begins with a drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway not far from where she lives. Bruce Holsinger, who teaches at the University of Virginia, is a nominee for The Gifted School, set in Colorado.
Ron Rash got a nice write-up in the August/September issue of Garden and Gun. https://gardenandgun.com/feature/meet-ron-rash-the-blue-collar-bard/?fbclid=IwAR0eZsQs-m8fmZ4L6eYDLNd2wF11CIOY1MqCRzOrwS_m0lH9ki37Anu04D8]]>
Among the books included in Publishers Weekly’s FALL ANNOUNCEMENTS ARE:
In HISTORY
The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution by Chris DeRose, forthcoming in November.
In MEMOIRS AND BIOGRAPHIES
She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh,
forthcoming in October.
In MYSTERIES AND THRILLERS
Murder in Hotel 1911: An Ivy Nichols Mystery by Audrey Keown forthcoming in August.
In POETRY
How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons) by Barbara Kingsolver, forthcoming in September.
Make Me Rain by Nikki Giovanni, forthcoming in October.
In Religion and Spirituality - Fiction
Mountain Laurel by Lori Benton, forthcoming in September.
The Librarian of Boone’s Hollow by Kim Vogel Sawyer, forthcoming in September
In Religion and Spirituality – Non-fiction
Always a Guest: Speaking of Faith Far from Home by Barbara Brown Taylor
Publishers Weekly’s June 29th issue gave a special boxed and starred review to
She Come by It Natural: Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs by Sarah Smarsh, due out in October. It concludes, “Smarsh’s luminescent prose and briskly tempered storytelling make for an illuminating take on a one-of-a-kind artist.”
The July 6th issue of Publishers Weekly gave a special boxed and starred review to
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, due out in September. It is partially set in Huntsville, Alabama, where the author grew up. The review ends, “At once a vivid evocation of the immigrant experience and a sharp delineation of an individual’s inner struggle, the novel brilliantly succeeds on both counts.”
Publishers Weekly’s July 6th issue has a special insert for the American Booksellers Association’s Children’s Institute, virtual this year. In that section is a special boxed feature on and her book, Cattywampus due out in August.
Ron Rash’s forthcoming story collection, In the Valley, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly that concluded, “The skillful craftsmanship of these tales and their subtle but powerful climaxes make for profoundly moving reading.”
Suzanne Samples, a lecturer at Appalachian State from Harrisville, West Virginia, won the Prime Number Magazine Short Fiction Award from Press 53. She is the author of Frontal Matter: Glue Gone Wild which won a Best Indy Book award from Kirkus Reviews in 2019.
Dolly Parton’s forthcoming Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics was recognized as one of Publishers Weekly’s “Deals of the Week” when Folio Literary Management sold it to Chronicle Books.
]]>Outbound Train by Renea Winchester of Whittier, North Carolina
Bells for Eli by Susan Beckham Zurenda of Spartanburg, South Carolina
When These Mountains Burn by David Joy, due out on August 18th, is on the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s Okra Picks for Summer 2020.
]]>James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South goes to Michael Croley, a native of Corbin, Kentucky, who teaches at Denison University. He is the author of Any Other Place: Stories.
He is pictured above.
The Hillsdale Award for Fiction goes to Wiley Cash. He is writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His latest novel is The Last Ballad.
The Donald Justice Award for Poetry goes to Frank X. Walker. He teaches at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Affrilachia.
The Woodward-Franklin Award for Historical Writing goes to Dan T. Carter. After a distinguished career at the University of South Carolina, he retired to Brevard, North Carolina. He is the author of Scottsboro: A Tragedy of the American South.
Julia Watts is the Winner of the 2020 Tennessee Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Award. TLA honors Watts for her contributions to the pursuit of intellectual freedom and her continued dedication to writing literature for and about LGBTQ youth in Appalachia. She is the author of Quiver.
Young God by Katherine Faw Morris, due to be published in July, is on the Bitter Southerner’s Summer Reading Roundup. It is set in Wilkes County, North Carolina.
The Yonahlossee Riding School for Girls byAnton DiSclafani, due to be published in June, is also on the Bitter Southerner’s Summer Reading Roundup. It is set in the Blue Ridge Mountains and Florida.
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes is #15 on the June 7th New York Times best seller list in hardback fiction after 32 weeks on the list.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson is #14 on the New York Times trade paperback fiction list after 12 weeks on the list.
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Also a Spring 2020 Okra Pick is Lee Smith’s Blue Marlin.
The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handler has been chosen for the 2020 Southern Book Prize in Fiction.
Wiley Cash has been named the 2020 Conroy Legacy Award Recipient.
The May 3rd New York Times best-seller list puts The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes at #9 in Hardback fiction, with 27 weeks on the top 15 in that category! It is also, #11 of best sellers in the South according to the Southern Independent Booksellers’ Alliance.
The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes has also been named one of USA Today’s top 100 books to read while stuck at home social distancing and is a Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine Book Club pick. This novel follows four women from diverse backgrounds who served as Pack Horse Librarians in Eastern Kentucky in the 1940s.
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson is #12 among Trade Paperback Fiction titles in the South.
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Finalists for the Lambda Literary Awards for 2019 have been announced:
In Lesbian Fiction: Stay and Fight by Madeline Ffitch
In Lesbian Romance: Tennessee Whiskey by Donna K. Ford
In LGBTQ Anthology: LGBTQ Fiction and Poetry from Appalachia by Jeff Mann and Julia Watts
The March 16th issue of Publishers Weekly has a special boxed review of Dance Away with Me by Susan Elizabeth Phillis, set in Runaway Mountain, Tennessee. It is due to be published on June 9th. Phillips grew up in Cincinnati and graduated from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and taught at a local high school and was a stay-at-home mom there. She met her husband at Ohio U. They now live in Chicago. She is the only five-time winner of the Romance Writers of America Book of the Year Award.
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes was the #14 best-seller on the latest New York Times Hardcover Fiction List in its 23rd week on that list.
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Ron Rash has been awarded the Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature given by Mercer University. The award was started in 2012. Previous winners are Ernest Gaines, Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer, Yusef Komunyakaa, Wendell Berry, Ellen Gilchrist, Natasha Trethewey, and Fred Chappell.
Frank X Walker has been awarded the 2020 Judy Gaines Young Book Award for his poetry book, Last Will, Last Testament. The award has been given to writers in Kentucky and Appalachia since 2015. He also made Ashia Ajani’s list of “Eight Black Eco-Poets Who Inspire Us” published in the February 21st issue of the Sierra Club magazine.
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes is #10 on the New York Times hardback fiction best-seller list for March 8, having been on the list for 20 weeks!
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson is #12 on the New York Times trade paperback fiction best seller list for March 8, having been on this list for 4 weeks now.
The Promise of Change: One Girl’s Story in the Fight for School Equality by Jo Ann Allen Boyce and Debbie Levy:
Winner of the 2019 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for Nonfiction
Kirkus Review’s Best Book of the Year in the category of Middle-Grade Books in Verse
One of five honor books for the Robert F. Silbert Informational Book Medal
New York Public Libraries’ Top Ten Books for Kids for 2019
Yaa Gyasi, who grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, in a family that immigrated from Ghana, made Publishers Weekly’s list of the ten most anticipated books of Spring 2020 in the category of Literary Fiction. Her forthcoming second novel is titled, Transcendent Kingdom, and follows a family from Ghana that immigrates to Alabama.
Kiki Petrosino’s forthcoming poetry collection, White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia made Publisher’s Weekly’s list of the top ten most anticipated poetry titles for the Spring of 2020. She teaches at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek was named Pennie’s Pick for February by Pennie Clark Ianniciello, Costco’s book buyer.
Adriana Trigiani, the best-selling author of eighteen books who grew up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, has been lured away from Harper to Dutton by a two-book contract. Her first Dutton book will be titled The Garden of Sundays. It is a multi-generational saga of Italians who immigrate to the United States.
Lorraine, (2018) by Ketch Secor, illustrated by Higgins Bond has been adapted by the Nashville Public Library’s Bring Books to Life (BBTL) program as a puppet show featuring a song written by the author, Ketch Secor, who is also a Grammy award-winning musician. In 2019, BBTL conducted 678 performances -- with five multi-cultural shows, including Lorriane and Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves -- reaching 48,810 audience members.
]]>Business and Economics includes: Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia by Chris Hamby scheduled for June release.
Literary Fiction includes: Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi due out in September
Poetry includes: White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia by Kiki Petrosino due out in May.
The Winter 2020 Okra Picks from the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance includes:
Hill Women by Cassie Chambers
The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenbert
Bells for Eli by Susan Beckham Zurenda
The Giver of Stars by JoJo Moyes is number 9 on the New York Times best-seller list for hardback fiction at the end of January 2020. This is its 15th week on the list.
Finalists for the Southern Book Prize in fiction awarded by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance include:
Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handler
Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson
Crystal Wilkinson has received one of six $50,000 unrestricted USA Fellowships from United States Artists, supported by the Rockerfeller Foundation.
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