Award-winning novelist Adriana Trigiani, author of the Big Stone Gap trilogy, Lucia, Queen of the Big Time, Rococo, and other best-selling works of fiction, will serve as the 2008 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence from September 29 to October 4, 2008.

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Trigiani is a native of Appalachia whose work reflects the values and traditions recognized by the Appalachian Heritage Writer's Award, given each year by the West Virginia Humanities Council, the West Virginia Center for the Book, and the Shepherd University Foundation. Trigiani's fiction and award-winning documentaries have focused on Italian-American characters with many of the stories set in rural western Virginia. The stories are imbued with characteristic Trigiani humor, vivid characterization, and a strong sense of place and family.

Trigiani was born in southwestern Virginia and now lives in New York. Her books have been on the New York Times bestselling books list, while her Big Stone Gap trilogy (Big Stone Gap, Big Cherry Holler, Milk Glass Moon) has captured the imagination of book clubs and reviewers across the nation. Big Stone Gap won the 2006 Virginia Library Award and was a People's Choice Award finalist. Trigiani's documentary based on her novel Queen of the Big Time won a 1996 Hamptons International Film Festival Audience Award. Her novel Rococo was a 2005 Publishers Weekly Fiction Award finalist.

About the Program
The Appalachian Heritage Writer's Award and Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence Project were developed by the Department of English at Shepherd University in 1998 to celebrate and honor the work of a distinguished contemporary Appalachian writer. The literary residency was designed to function in concert with the Appalachian Heritage Festival, an annual celebration of Appalachian artistic and cultural traditions, sponsored by the Performing Arts Series at Shepherd (PASS).

To encourage aspiring West Virginia writers and to promote the kind of networking that fosters literary achievement, Shepherd University developed, in fall 2001, the West Virginia Fiction Competition. Fiction submissions from across the state of West Virginia are judged by a panel of teachers and writers, with final selection of the winning works of fiction made by the Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence. The first-prize winner of the fiction competition will receive a cash prize of $500.

The Anthology of Appalachian Writers is a publication that encourages a long-established tradition of storytelling, love of language, and creative expression associated broadly with the area of the country known as Appalachia. Though the principal mission of the anthology is to provide a venue for publication of new writers, it also provides a collection of literature and scholarship that contributes to an understanding and appreciation for the region. Poetry, fiction, memoir, heritage writers, as well as new voices appear in each annual volume of the anthology.