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May 2020 News from the Appalachian Literary Scene
The Fellowship of Southern Writers has announced their 2020 Awards: Four of their seven awards went to writers with connections to the Appalachian South. 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...
April 2020 News from the Appalachian Literary Scene
The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels, scheduled for a May 19th release has received a great deal of positive notice. It is one of Entertainment Weekly’s Most Anticipated Books of 2020, 0 Magazine’s 31 LGBTQ Books That’ll Change the Literary Landscape in 2020, BookRiot’s “Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books of 2020, Atlanta Journal Constitution’s 10 Southern Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2020, Bitch Media’s 27 Novels Feminists Should Read in 2020, Xtra 12 LGBTQ Books You Won’t Want to Miss in 2020, and a Spring 2020 Okra Pick from the Southern Independent Booksellers’ Alliance Also a Spring 2020 Okra...
March 2020 News from the Appalachian Literary Scene
Rita Quillen will be the honored Appalachian author at the 39th Emory & Henry Literary Festival in the fall of 2020. 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...
February 2020 News from the Appalachian Literary Scene
Lisa Alther received one of eight ISF International Awards for Human Achievement for 2019 at a ceremony in the Library of the Athenaeum Club on Pall Mall in London, England. ISF stands for the Idries Shah Foundation, named for Idries Shah, a renowned Sufi author and thinker seen as building a bridge between Eastern and Western thinking. Other recipients this year included Jane Goodall and Sir David Attenborough. The Awards themselves take the form of gilded ormolu medallions, crafted in the workshops of Spink & Son, legendary medal-makers to Queen Elizabeth II, founded in 1666. Ron Rash has been...
January 2020 News from the Appalachian Literary Scene
Publishers Weekly’s Spring 2020 Announcements Top 10: 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...