What Is the Future of Appalachian Literature?
read appalachia ep. 3
One of the biggest solo projects I’ve ever had, Read Appalachia holds a special place in my heart. I love the people from my region and our literature. For each episode of Read Appalachia, I sketch out my ideas for the introduction for each episode. I’ll be including these snippets here for folks to enjoy. These posts will be bonus posts in addition to Winchester Ave’s regular content.
Episode 3 - Introduction
(Originally Published February 16th, 2023)
Welcome back to my library, and as always, I’m joined by my judgmental assistant producer, Dylan, my Corgi who has plenty of opinions. One of them is a deep hatred for the neverending rain that we’ve been having here in the upstate. For whatever reason, South Carolina decided that winter must mean rain. I cannot accurately describe Dylan’s facial expression right now, but rest assured, he disapproves.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve wanted to launch the podcast by starting with our three introductory questions. But I also wanted us to get to know each other a little more. Now you all know, I’m from Appalachian Ohio, I live with my spouse and two opinionated Corgis. But for today’s question, What is the future of Appalachian Literature? I think it’s also important to know that I’m disabled.
For my entire life, I’ve had a disabling chronic illness, and I spent much of my childhood on the highway going back and forth from Portsmouth to the Cincinnati Children’s hospital. To make the time go by, my parents and I would listen to a slew of audiobooks, but none of them were about a sick kid like me. I felt like I was weird, abnormal, out of place. I didn’t like talking about being chronically ill because, honestly, both adults and other kids didn’t know what to make of me. Having little to no disability representation in media meant that they had no cultural reference points of understanding to know how to relate to me. But it didn’t have to be that way.
The future of Appalachian Literature is important to me because I want other kids from all marginalized backgrounds to be able to see themselves in the books they read. I want high school and college students to have a little more guidance. I want them to have stories that portray the different possible futures for their lives and to let them know that they’re not alone.
So, to that end, that’s what we’re talking about today. We’ll be answering the question, what is the future of Appalachian Literature?
Well, a special series of books published by the University of Kentucky Press is aiming to answer that question. A few years ago U of KP announced their series: Appalachian Futures: Black, Native, and Queer Voices, which includes series editors Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Davis Shoulders, and Crystal Wilkinson. On their website, which will be linked in the show notes, they state:
“This book series gives voice to Black, Native, Latinx, Asian, Queer, and other nonwhite or ignored identities within the Appalachian region. It does not seek to define the region. Reading from Appalachia rather than about Appalachia, it will observe the process of becoming by amplifying the experiences that a multiplicity of writers, activists, organizers, and everyday people find within its boundaries and in their absence from this place. This series will advance a creative ecosystem unrivaled within traditional cultural hubs, creating a space for the voices and stories of Appalachia’s future.”
I wanted to talk to some of the folk working on this series. Later in the show, I’ll be talking to Stacy Jane Grover, the author of TAR HOLLOW TRANS, the first book coming out from the series, and her editor Abby Freeland, who is an acquisitions editor for other books in the series. But first, I talk to series editor Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, who kindly came back on the show to discuss her role in the series and the anthology of Indigenous writers that she’s currently working on for Appalachian Futures.
As you may remember from our first episode, Annette is the author of EVEN AS WE BREATHE, which is the first published novel by an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee. In our previous conversation, she talked about her ideas around what is Appalachian literature? So to me, there is no better way to start this episode than by asking her about Appalachian Literature’s future.
Outro
Let me tell you, if this essay collection is anything to go by, Appalachian Futures is going to be a stunning series. Now, we do have a few months to wait. Stacy Jane’s book comes out in June. But, like we talked about in episode two, pre-ordering books is so important for both university presses and their authors. So if you can, head over to your local bookstore or library and pre-order or request this book. Or I’ve included the bookshop.org link in the show notes and you can pre-order it there.
Now, as you may have gathered, I am a rather positive person when it comes to books. I am a happy cheerleader and hype girl for Appalachian Lit forever and always. But even I don’t believe that books will somehow magically cure all that ails Appalachia. Just thinking about everything that has come out in the news this week makes me so incredibly discouraged. There is an overwhelming amount of work that needs to be done. But even with all of that, I still believe in hope. And, as corny as it sounds, I do believe that books in the right hands can be a bright light in these dark times. So books like the ones coming out from the Appalachian Futures series are such an encouragement to me when I think about the future of our region’s literature.
With this three-part series to launch the podcast, we’ve talked about what Appalachian Literature is, where it comes from, and where it’s going. Whether you are from the region or not, whether you consider yourself a book person or not, hopefully these three episodes gave you a baseline for what we’ll be talking about on Read Appalachia.
What’s in store for the rest of the season? Working on this season, I realized that folks had a lot more questions than just these first three. So I’m thinking of the rest of the season as Appalachian Literature 101. We’ll be covering the basics, talking with all sorts of different kinds of Appalachian writers and delving into different genres. I cannot wait.
So, next time, the first episode on our new schedule of new episodes on the first Thursday of every month, we’ll be discussing memoirs. And yes, we will be discussing the impact of THAT book. So stay tuned! In the meantime, be sure to check out our live show over on Instagram on February 23rd at 9pm ET.